Mass Effect: Batarian Tango
by Wired Dragoon
Summary: A year after the 'Battle of the Citadel' a ragtag Alliance 'Corsair' team gathers on Omega to investigate attacks on human colonies near the Terminus Systems. But what they find may turn out to be more than they had bargained for... /OC/ Please R
1. Prologue

**P R O L O G U E**

_Once there were three tribes. The Optimists, whose patron saints were Drake and Sagan, believed in a universe crawling with gentle intelligence — spiritual brethren vaster and more enlightened than we, a great galactic siblinghood into whose ranks we would someday ascend. Surely, said the Optimists, space travel implies enlightenment, for it requires the control of great destructive energies. Any race which can't rise above its own brutal instincts will wipe itself out long before it learns to bridge the interstellar gulf._

_Across from the Optimists sat the Pessimists, who genuflected before graven images of Saint Fermi and a host of lesser lightweights. The Pessimists envisioned a lonely universe full of dead rocks and prokaryotic slime. The odds are just too low, they insisted. Too many rogues, too much radiation, too much eccentricity in too many orbits. It is a surpassing miracle that even one Earth exists; to hope for many is to abandon reason and embrace religious mania. After all, the universe is fourteen billion years old: if the galaxy were alive with intelligence, wouldn't it be here by now?_

_Equidistant to the other two tribes sat the Historians. They didn't have too many thoughts on the probable prevalence of intelligent, spacefaring extraterrestrials — but if there are any, they said, they're not just going to be smart. They're going to be mean._

_It might seem almost too obvious a conclusion. What is Human history, if not an on going succession of greater technologies grinding lesser ones beneath their boots? But the subject wasn't merely Human history, or the unfair advantage that tools gave to any given side; the oppressed snatch up advanced weaponry as readily as the oppressor, given half a chance. No, the real issue was how those tools got there in the first place. The real issue was what tools are for._

_To the Historians, tools existed for only one reason: to force the universe into unnatural shapes. They treated nature as an enemy, they were by definition a rebellion against the way things were. Technology is a stunted thing in benign environments, it never thrived in any culture gripped by belief in natural harmony. Why invent fusion reactors if your climate is comfortable, if your food is abundant? Why build fortresses if you have no enemies? Why force change upon a world which poses no threat?_

_Human civilization had a lot of branches, not so long ago. Even into the twenty-second century, a few isolated tribes had barely developed stone tools. Some settled down with agriculture. Others weren't content until they had ended nature itself, still others until they'd built cities in space. And some stopped alltogether. And yet, history never said that everyone had to stop where those had done. It only suggested that those who had stopped no longer struggled for existence. There could be other, more hellish worlds where the best Human technology would crumble, where the environment was still the enemy, where the only survivors were those who fought back with sharper tools and stronger empires. _

_The threats contained in those environments would not be simple ones. Harsh weather and natural disasters either kill you or they don't, and once conquered — or adapted to — they lose their relevance. No, the only environmental factors that continued to matter were those that fought back, that countered new strategies with newer ones, that forced their enemies to scale ever-greater heights just to stay alive. _

_Ultimately, the only enemy that mattered was an intelligent one._

_And if the best toys do end up in the hands of those who've never forgotten that life itself is an act of war against intelligent opponents, what does that say about a race whose machines travel between the stars? The argument was straightforward enough. It might even have been enough to carry the Historians to victory, but the Historian paradigm was just too ugly, too Darwinian, for most people, and besides, even after the War of the First Contact, most people had more or less settled down into a milder Sagan-esque state, still living on Earth or on colonies easily in reach of a Mass Relays. _

_Still, war, war never changes, and the cycle of day and night in the galaxy has seen many a civilization rise and fall, even though some have tried to play policeman to the lawlessness of it all, including the prevention of 'murder'. But the reality is anything but that nice metaphor._

_There is no policeman._

_There is no way out._

_And the night _never_ ends._

- taken and slightly edited from: _Peter Watts (2006): Blindsight_

**Mayfair, Outer Edges of the Attican Traverse,**

**2184 C.E.**

Mayfair was, on the scale of galactic events and place, an insignificant spot. Remarkable only for the fact that it was one of only a few habitable planets ever to be found in the life-sustaining zone of a rare combination of an orange K-class star and a bright F-class star twice the radius of Sol, the tropical world bore less mineral ressources than the inhospitable balls of rock and gas accompaying it in its wide ellyptic path around its two stars. Fifteen hundred years ago the Asari had briefly held possession of it, considering it a target for eventual colonization, but the Rachni Wars and the Krogan Rebellions had put an end to those plans. Corporations had dug for titanium and platinum and copper on it during the following centuries, but the planetary crust had never yielded enough of a result to justify a permanent presence. A dozen times or more Mayfair had changed hands and name, until six years ago human settlers had become the last in the long line of owners.

The afternoon sky had a tint of a purple haze in it, courtesy of the icy rings of Gluskap, named after a mythical giant of the Algonquin tribe back on Earth. Slowly, the helium-methane giant crawled over the treeline on the horizon, the light of two suns making the giant white spot of a methane storm thousands of kilometres in diameter on its northern pole look like a flaring, angry eye. The air on Mayfair, at least close to the small town of the same name, was almost standing still, appearing almost like a hot and humid curtain to those unfamiliar with the climate.

Harald Jefferson leaned his head back, sniffing for the vanishing traces of ozone in the air. It was always this still this time of the month, the quiet before the storms that Gluskap's passing entailed, the massive white and purple ball somewhat wreaking havoc on Mayfair's tidal system. Visitors, as uncommon as they were, often covered under the tables when the winds howled outside with almost 150 kilometres per hour, but Jefferson slept exceptionally well during those nights. Mayfair's biosphere had longs since adapted to the gas giant passing by twice every one and a half years, its plants having deep and solid roots.

The engineered crops the colonists planted also weathered those storms well enough, though they still had to import fertilizer every year. Mayfair was a small colony, the last census showing a population of just about 1,800 people, most of them farmers who had come here together with reverend Walther Xian, getting away from the Alliance to lead a self-determined life. They still sent a patrol frigate through the system every three months or so, but the people here never had had any problems with pirates or slavers of greedy corporations, and Harald Jefferson at elast was more than happy that they stayed away. The Alliance always meddled in people's lifes, always attracted trouble and opposition. Now, they most certainly had no need of the Alliance and all the baggage it entailed.

Especially in the light of the events on the Citadel and what happened after them Jefferson was more than happy to be on Mayfair, he thought, walking through a field of genengineered wheat, feeling the top of the plants with his palms. No, this here was a simple life, a peaceful life.

A gust of wind ripped him from his thoughts, the slap of warm air putting an irritated frown on his stoic, high-jawed ebony face. It was too early for the wind to fresh up! Now that could become a problem with the harvest if-

With a deafening roar a wave of pressurized air threw him off his feet, flattening the crops he had been thinking about. It was followed by the high-pitched whine of running engines and the low, vibrating hum of machinery as a stub-nosed, short-winged starship almost leisurely maneuvered only a few hundred feet above him towards the town. The whine intensified fast, until he had to shield his ears in fear of his eardrums bursting, then three blue bolts erupted from the vessel's bow, almost too fast to make out. An explosion, dwarfing all the noise the descending starship made by several magnitudes, rocked the ground, and a small mushroom cloud of dust and debris and fire erupted from the middle of the colony.

Town hall and the comm tower, Jefferson registered in a dazed calm. He should be panicked, he knew, should do something, but fear and surprise kept him pinned to the ground, watching the grey and red-painted ship slowly approach the neat settlement, like a confident predator walking towards a cornered prey, brandishing its fangs. The ship fired again, this time from its port side, a small thin stream of whitish blue sweeping across main street. This time the explosions were small and spread out, and he could hear the rumble that a mass of panicked people was bound to create. Detaching a host of smaller vehicles, the ship took up a position right above Mayfair's town greens.

Harald Jefferson scrambled to his feet, shaking off the daze, and darted off towards the town, to his house and family. Behind him, like appearing out of Gluskap's angry eye, another ship shot across the hoirzon towards the colony, trailing ionized air around it like a blazing ring. It was the same type as the one already hanging above the besieged town, and had Jefferson looked up he would have made out a large name painted on its hull in batarian script, alongside a multitude of apparently hand-written taunts in the same language.

Two hours later, silence reigned in the empty streets and houses of Mayfair, its open spaces littered with debris and corpses as both suns slowly set on the horizon.

It was one of twenty-three colonies in the Traverse and the Terminus Systems hit that day.

**Amazonas Metroplex, Earth,**

**Systems Alliance, 2184 C.E.**

The irritating whine of the overburdened air conditioning almost drowned the background chatter of the wall-covering television screen of the gloomy appartment. If you had served more than half of your conscious life aboard starships in an arid environment where temperatures always hovered between 18 and 20° Celsius, settling down again in the tropical heat and humidity of South America's Amazonas Basin was a major undertaking. Not that Carl Amos Kenyon had tried very hard to adapt so far. His appartment was a mess, and that only if one was very generous. Take home food packages littered the floor and most other level spaces of the cubic box hardly fit to be called home, as did beer cans and dirty laundry. With the sun-blinds down twenty-four seven and the lights out he spent his waking ours in a murky twilight in front of the flickering screen. There were weekly power outages, times when the nets' just went blank for a few seconds, but he did not care much about that. After all, this was not the Sao Paolo Ritz, but rather just one step above the slums circling the metroplex in all directions.

With his meager pension could not afford more than that. Hell, he was lucky he had that meager pension after the discharge! _Lieutenant-Commander_ Carl Amos Kenyon had been only a step away from receiving the command of a brand new frigate when his whole career had come tumbling down like a house of cards.

Four months ago the ship he had served on, the _SSV Utah_, had brought up a Turian merc they had traced back to several pirate attacks on the fringes of Alliance space. Kenyon had been the leader of the boarding party when the destroyer had gone alongside the privateer. Knowing he would get blown to pieces in a stand-up fight, the Turian had complied with their orders to shut down his drive and let them come aboard.

It had all been dreary routine until they had reached the cargo bay.

Amos Kenyon was no rookie. He had been in the navy since his eighteenths birthday twenty two years ago, and during his career he had brought up or witnessed the destruction of more ships than he could count on his fingers. Slavers, pirates, mercs – he had seen it all. Still, he had not been prepared for what awaited him in the twilight of the cargo holds of the _Palas_. Unnaturally thin faces. Empty eyes. Flies and maggots. The smell of urine and shit and death everywhere. A starving batarian infant crying, sucking at the rotting teet of his dead mother. Half dead people, no, shadows of people everywhere, herded into metal cages half as tall as himself, left to rot for days and days. And in the middle of it, a smug Turian, waving a shipping manifesto proclaiming the legality of what he was doing under contract law.

The Westerlund News crew that had been aboard the _Utah_ for publicity reasons had puked their guts out already by then and was busy filming again. Like vultures, he thought. He still had the clip on disc, the raw as well as the edited version. A souvenir, evidence from his military trial. The narration on it sounded almost excited as it talked about how he had executed the ship's captain and the crewmembers who had been with him in the cargo bay, a couple of batarians, in a fit of furious rage. Quite unlike the disgust and panic and shrill fear of the real thing. Quite unlike the _nothing_ he had felt as he had done it. Nothing at all. Walking up to them, he had unholstered his sidearm and shot each of the three in the face at point blank range, then calmly handed over his gun to the nearest marine and ordered them all to call in all the _Utah_'s medical staff to look after the 'cargo'.

He knew he was not above the law. That had never been the question. But he had been on the job long enough to know how nine in ten of such cases actually worked out. As foreign nationals were involved, lenient sentences were pronounced, ships confiscated – and two years later they would be back in business, quite often with a vengeance. No, he could not have let that happen again, not this time, even if it meant his career, his freedom.

But the Turian captain had been a decorated military veteran, a man with connections. The whole case became political, if only behind the scenes. The Navy did its best to keep the news from spreading, exploiting loopholes in the contract it had signed with Westerlund News, effectively bullying them into silence. The Turians also were quieted after threats surfaced to link one of their own with the conditions, conveniently available on film, on the _Palas_. But there was bad blood, and he was guilty anyway. In fact, he got off light for what he had done.

The compromise was a face-saver for all concerned, but it left him adrift. No other experience than soldiering, and a black mark on his vita. Nowhere to go. So he drowned in his own apathy.

A series of images showing starships flashed across the wide screen, and he instinctively focussed on them, but just for a second. It was an add for the Navy, showing obviously tinkered battle footage, proud men and women in uniform, music and a narrator's voice full of pathos. It was ridiculous. At least they had stopped using Shephard's face or it, going with some randomized image nowadays that most certainly originated from a VI programme factoring in the most likely demographic groups susceptible for the intended message. Propaganda for a glass-jawed tiger.

His gaze flickered over the garbage piling up in his room. Nobody visited him, and he hardly went outside anyway. There was no need to get rid of the trash. He had done that four months ago.

No, he had no family, and most the people he knew professionally were on duty somewhere in the galaxy, and even then, he was no officially a civilian. God, how he hated it. There were times when he wished there had been a firefight aboard the _Palas_ and he had gone down then and there. He felt useless, a tool discarded off before its time. He had tried to drink those thoughts away, with little success. Lately, he found himself thinking more often about the gun in the top shelf of his drawer. A foolish thought, he knew, but a persistent one.

The appartment's comm console started beeping aggressively in an unintelligible melody that seemed to pierce his frontal lobes. Irritatedly, he grabbed an empty can of beer and threw it against it, silencing the damn thing. Leaning out of his filthy armchair he grabbed himself a fresh can of beer, shaking his head. He really needed to change the ring tone on the fuckin' comm terminal to something that did not come close to killing him. Placing the can against his lips, he took a couple of deep, long pulls. Arising the bother him anew, the comm console got him in the middle of it, almost making him choke on the luke-warm beer in his hands, sloshing beer and beer foam all over himself and the goddamn chair. With a half-full can of beer in one hand and nothing heavy enough in reach of his other hand he yielded up to his fate and walked over to the flashing piece of technology, groaning, and pushed the most prominent button on it.

There was a momentary delay before the actual connection was established that brought him to full attention. An encrypted call, for him? A serious face with high jawbones and well-trimmed whiskers appeared on screen, and Kenyon instinctively stood at attention. Fransciso 'Napoleon' Bautista's hawkish face seemed as it had been chiselled from Martian granite, not showing one ounce of emotion.

"How are you doing, son?" the captain of the _SSV Utah_ and his former commanding officer asked cordially.

"I'm... rather busy, Sir," Kenyon lied, tilting his head to the left while he unconsciously scratched his stubble. "Looking for a job, getting the rent payed," he frowned as he saw the man on the other side just nodding, taking the lies in one stride. That was quite unlike his former commander. Not taking his eyes of Fransciso Bautista's face he used his left hand to bring up a sub-menu on the console that allowed him the data tracer of the call. And all he got was heavily encrypted garble.

"With little luck, as I am told," the uniformed man stated casually, causing Kenyon to avert his gaze.

"Ah, Sir, I am thankful for your call, but I really have a lot of things on my mind right now."

Captain Fransciso Bautista simply nodded again.

"I am sorry for what happened to you, son. But this here's no life for you, either. You need to get back into space. And I'm willing to get you there."

That got him Kenyon's full attention.

"I'm listening," he tried to keep his voice level.

"A high-risk mission, fishing in the dark. Small team, independent work, no back-up from the Alliance so there's plausible deniability," the captain explained. "Specialists who get things done without caring for the rules or consequences," he smiled. "We call them the Corsairs."

Carl Amos Kenyon thought of the gun in his drawer, then a thin smile crept on his face.

"I'm in, sir."


	2. Chapter 1

**C H A P T E R 1**

It felt good, being back in space, even though it was onboard a slow and rusty Volus merchant doing irregular runs between the local cluster, the Attican Traverse and Omega Station in the Terminus Systems. Unlike in the confines of his shabby appartment in Amazonas Metroplex he felt strangely at home in the cramped intestines of the 300-metre freighter. Sure, it was no Alliance military ship, and most of the crew and of the passengers were aliens - volus, two asari, salarians, a handful of turians and even an unwillingly funny elcor -, but they spoke his language, the language of people who had spent years and years out among the stars.

You saw more of them on the colonies and in the Traverse than on the inner worlds, or Earth. That was due to economic reasons, many claimed - why travel to the local cluster if you could just do the deal three and a half thousand light years away with the local human colony?

But that was only one reason. Humans had had a bad reputation from the moment they charged onto the galactic stage with the First Contact War, received by the other races as bullies and potential aggressors. And it had only gotten worse during the past two years.

Ever since the Citadel, the heart of galactic government and commerce, had been attacked and the old council killed, the blame had been squarely lay at the feet of humanity. Few openly went so far as to claim the humans had killed the council and sat out the heavy fighting that saw the destruction of the _Destiny Ascension_ and the majority of the Citadel's fleet, but most observed in their way of thinking that humanity had been far too eager to fill the void of power by itself.

He was not really sure of what to make of it. For one, he had always been a supporter for Terra Firma, going so far as having helped with campaigns when he still been young and easily impressionable. Still, on the other hand, travelling between the stars for twenty-two years had rather unforgivingly opened his eyes to the fact that the universe was neither black nor white.

The universe as a whole had definitely become more dangerous to humans in the past eighteen months, but it was not easy to point fingers. For all the martial prowess, aggression and willingness attributed to them by the other three council member races, human forces were stretched dangerously thin. For every dreadnought the Navy fielded, the other three major powers combined fielded eight - and their responsibilities had not grown!

Laughter from a few metres away ripped him out of his thoughts as a small crowd, lead by a Volus in his kind's signature pressure suits forced itself through the narrow bulkhead of the ship's second mess hall. Amos could almost feel the temperature in the room dropping as the passengers began to avoid eye contact with the newcomers, doing their best to pretend they were not there at all. He would not have needed his long frontier service experience to realize that those newcomers meant trouble. That the ship's owner stood at the centre of it surprised him even less.

Ursa Gol ran a tight ship crewed by a mix of Turians, Batarians and even a handful of Salarians. He did business with the Alliance because it paid his bills, but a few exchanged sentences with the man had proven to Kenyon beyond a doubt that, like many other Volus, the stout merchant harboured a strong dislike against humans. Even confined to their pressure suits the ammonia-breathing species could be quite expressive.

"What a coincidence," Gol exclaimed to no one in particular, his short arms pressed against the sides of his black and grey and brown suit. "So many of my _dear_ passengers in one place at a time! And that," his respirator cut the sentence in half, "when I had an announcement - to make."

The men who had arrayed themselves behind him in a half-circle snickered and jeered. There were six of them, including Ursa Gol.

"Running a ship is - expensive business," the four and a half feet tall creature continued. "This is a dangerous - journey, and you people could not imagine - the overhead. Well, Ursa Gol cares for you - but you will have to pay - a, let's call it 'service and safety' - fee."

The sailors accompanying him burst into raucous laughter.

Amos watched them from the corner of his eyes while drinking slow, concentrated sips of his coffee, his other hand working the notepad he had brought from his cabin. It showed the ship's course and its momentary position. They had left Alliance space about a standard hour ago; they were now in a region of space where everybody made their own laws and rules. Ursa Gol had just made his.

"This is not what we agreed on!" a Salarian in used clothes and a pale purple skin tone complained angrily. "I paid my fare, I-"

One of the Batarians accompanying Gol casually stepped forward and sucker-punched him in the stomach, sending him back to his seat where he collapsed with a pain-filled moan. A tall Turian sporting red tattoos cracked his knuckles, the gesture dousing whatever flames of resistance might have existed among the passengers. Amos refilled his cup and kept his eyes on the pad in his hands. With the two Asari probably resting in their cabin the Volus had proven a good sense of timing for his little extortion racket. Doubtless he had weighed the chances of his success against two natural biotics and come to the most sensible conclusion: staying the hell away from them.

Now, he felt safe. That had been his first mistake. People, regardless of whether they were human, Salarian, Volus or any other species, became careless when they thought they held the upper hand. Careless, sloppy. The second mistake had been clustering together just the way they did. Yes, it raised the Volus' sense of importance, and yes, so much muscle on the spot was intimidating - if one was easily intimidated.

The other passengers - there were twenty-five aboard, eleven of them here in the mess - had the good sense to pay. Gol was quite generous in that he only took about a couple hundred credits from each of them, having his men go for rings and jewellery if the sum he extorted appeared too small to him. Amos sat in the back corner of the mess hall, having ample time to watch it all with a sense of cold detachment. The elcor sat the closest to him.

"[Meek and embarrassed] Here you are. Will that be all?" he said as he handed his chit over to the Salarian 'collecting' Gol's extra fee. The alien stepped closer to him with a sneer and a sparkle in his big, black eyes.

Salarian. Big, black eyes. Going with the coffee came as the most logical conclusion.

The steaming hot fluid hit the thug right in the face, and the sneer switched into a twisted grimace, the Salarian dropping to the ground, clutching his eyes, howling with pain. Using the momentum of the same motion, Amos hurled the cup at the Batarian in the centre of the group, hitting him square in the chest. The alien seemed more startled than hurt, but it was just this one second Amos Kenyon needed. While the Batarian looked at him dumbfounded, forgetting he was the one with the shotgun in his hands, the hollow-cheeked man brought up his own pistol and pulled the trigger.

The first shot hit the Batarian right between his four eyes. Four more shots left the heavy pistol with a hiss, the integrated silencer deafening the muzzle blasts. It all happened in a split second, and when it was over the Volus stood alone, surrounded only by moaning or _very_ silent figures on the metal ground of the mess hall.

"Everybody, leave," Kenyon commanded, watching Ursa Gol over the sights of his gun. A small red laser dot hovered right in the centre of the Volus' pressure suit. He was breathing fast, his respirator working in rapid gasps, and his short arms were shivering. Behind him, people were doing there best to get out of the room without stepping into the extending pools of blood clustered around Gol. Kenyon himself ignored the Salarian on the ground. The man's agonized cries had turned into a whimper, but even a casual glance would have shown Amos that he was no threat, not anymore. Ten feet from Gol, he stopped, coldly eyeing the carnage. He felt the adrenaline flow through his veins, his arm forming a straight, unwavering line. Damn it, he felt so alive!

"What do - you want Earth - clan?"

Kenyon's smile was that of a wolf eyeing a lamb.

"Let's do some business, Mr. Gol, shall we?"

The smell was horrible, a heavy, pestering sweetness mixed with sweat and excretions. It made his stomach heave. Lieutenant-Commander Kenyon pressed a heavy security gauntlet against his mouth, closing his eyes for a moment to get his thoughts straight again, get the images all around him into the back of his head. He could work this out later, he could do it.

"This is Kenyon. Securing second cargo deck," he reported back to the _Utah _through clenched teeth, motioning the squad of marines behind him to move on. The faces of the men and women were completely blank, and that alone mirrored more of what he saw than any sign of shock or revulsion. Blood flies were everywhere, thick, black things that lived off the sick and implanted their eggs into infected tissue. Glassy eyes looked up at him from wire-framed cages that were at best waist-high. Pleading eyes in the skulls of sentient beings too weak to even speak, their lips dry and cracked. There were children in there, too. Or people reduced so much to skeletons that they could pass off as children. He could not say for certain in the twilight of the cargo bay.

Amos Kenyon had seen a lot in his two decades of service with the Alliance. Over time, he had erected barriers around himself, emotional barriers helping him to deal with what he saw and did. And right now, he could feel the cracks in them widening.

"Damn it, Mayers, get those damn light on!"

His own voice sounded hoarse and distant. There were dozens of cages, and there were people in all of them. And they had no light. A voice in his mind whispered to him that no lights were probably for the best.

"Call in the medics," he continued giving orders, "and everybody put on your breather masks. This air is ripe with infection."

He stopped at the end of a long row of cages, shouldering his assault rifle. A part of him wanted nothing so much as to space every single crewmember of this floating death trap, another part just wanted to crawl into a corner and be left alone. And then he heard it. A soft, chewing sound, like someone was eating gummi bears. He looked down.

Amos Kenyon awoke, gasping for air, his heart racing frantically in his chest. He was bathed in cold sweat. It took him some moments to slow his breathing again, taking in deep, controlled breaths of the stale air of the cabin. Amos felt his heart beat slow down, beat by beat, staring at the blank, metal wall on the other side of his bunk. Even the dim lights in there seemed to strain his eyes, a dull, throbbing pain coming from insufficient sleep and four beer-fueled months creeping closer to the edge of suicide. But it was easier to face the pain than to face the images in his head he knew would come the very moment he closed his eyes.

The ship was slowing down. Having lived on spaceships for half his life, Amos had gotten a feel for such things; the way gravity seemed to momentarily shift for just the smallest part of a single percent despite the best inertial dampeners, they way the light of the stars shining in from the outside changed, how the volume of the soft hum of the engines lowered - how in a split second the whole atmosphere of a colossus of thousands upon thousands of tons of metal and composites seemed to change.

Amos shoved himself off the bunk. Standing on wobbly knees, he made his way to the small sink that provided a modicum of running water for the cabin. His own face stared back at him from a narrow mirror tucked over the sink. It was the face of a hollow-cheeked man with sun-tanned skin and short, deep black hair. Tired green eyes lay deep in his skull, high cheekbones and a square jaw giving it the look of something chiselled into stone. He would have considered himself somewhat attractive if he had not looked like death himself right now.

Amos took deep, controlled breaths. He looked a lot older, and a lot worse than his actual thirty-nine years. One look at his shivering hands convinced him that it was easier to bear some stubble than to accidentally cut his own throat with a razor. Unresolved issues, lack of sleep, the effects of mild detox and the _excitement_ four and a half hours earlier took their toll. But it was still better than some day putting a gun to his own head in a garbage-filled rat hole in the Amazonas basin.

Asteroids appeared outside, far off in a safe shipping distance. The merchant did a wide starboard swing, then surged 'up' (even though, strictly speaking, there was neither up nor down in space), letting their destination come up in Amos' field of view. It looked like a giant mushroom cloud moulded into stone and steel.

The light from the stars outside faded as the freighter entered one of the massive hangar bays, and soon thereafter magnetic clamps held the ship in a firm grip. It was time to go. He disconnected the nasty surprise he had installed on his cabin's bulkhead - a makeshift anti-intrusion insurance policy featuring lethal electric currents - and made for the exit. Ursa Gol stood near the open bulkhead with two more crewmembers and watched as his passengers, one after another, left his ship. The Volus visibly stiffened when Kenyon wordlessly stepped through the metal frame and onto the station.

A long, wide corridor made from metal and inch-thick armor-glass lead from the long docking pylon deeper into the huge structure. On one side, grey rock and cables filled the empty spaces behind the glass. The other side presented a view into a massive, twilight-filled and bay-like open space from which tunnels, most of them hundreds of metres wide, lead 'outside' with no kinetic barrier fields between them. Only the metal and the glass stood between him and the vacuum in which dozens, if not hundreds of ships of all trades and sizes lay docked. For all he could make out from his position, some of them even looked like former cruise liners.

No starship captain with even half his brains still functioning would steer a major cruise liner through the Terminus Systems, but there were some smaller companies who had specialized in providing exactly this kind of service for that bracket of customers which had the money as well as the guts to bear such a voyage. Fast ships half the size of the Volus' freighter, armed well enough to fight off most pirates and equipped with luxurious suites and all the necessary amenities for a hundred and fifty paying passengers or more. Amos Kenyon had briefly played with the thought of applying for a job with one of those companies. It had been one of the few things he had really taken into closer consideration.

People said Omega was like the dark, twisted twin of the Citadel, and they were certainly right. There were the same species - a lot more Krogan especially, and fewer humans - and just as the Citadel was the centre of the civilized galactic community Omega was the centre of the, well, less civilized galactic community. There were even the same power-fights and the same back-stabbing, even though the back-stabbing part was, for the most part, a lot more literal here. Everybody who could afford to do so either armed themselves or paid one or the other gang or merc group to 'keep the peace'. The silenced pistol tucked behind his back between the belt, another automatic pistol in a plainly visible leg holster and an anthracite armour vest under his lather jacket the dark-haired, hawk-eyed man certainly had his reasons to hope to discourage Omega's less prolific scum from doing anything too stupid.

After the rhythmic monotony of the trip the noise of Omega was deafening. The few wide open promenades connecting the larger subsections of each of the multitude of levels of the station were crammed with people hastening from one place to another, with peddlers and wandering merchants. Above them, advertisement banners for corporations and services offered on the station flicked, a thousand slogans in all directions and all language.

He saw people lead with chains around their necks - Batarian, Salarian, Turian, even a few bleak human faces - and had to force himself to maintain a blank, disinterested face so confronted with slavery. Nobody else here seemed to notice or even care. Omega was in the Terminus Systems. As long as it was profitable and did not endanger the station itself, it was allowed.

Kenyon had never been to Omega before - fat chance of that as a serving Alliance officer - but the people who had chosen him for the job had briefed him well enough. Making his way through the crowds he found himself in front of the _Afterlife_ half an hour station time later. The club was the unofficial centre of the station, the place in whose backrooms all the important deals supposedly were made. It was always open, and there were always people lining up outside to get inside, to where the drinks, the music and the good deals were. It was amusing to see that they had an Elcor bouncer, though in a way it was actually a quite clever arrangement. After all, there was hardly a species as unreadable as the elephantine Elcor.

Patience was not exactly one of his greatest qualities, but he waited in line until it was his turn. Surprisingly, the bouncer did not check him for weapons, but solely scanned his omni-tool. Kenyon asked him why he did that.

"[Bored and repetitive] To see if you can actually pay for the services, human," the Elcor answered and motioned him to move.

He passed a second line of bouncers - this time Batarians with milspec firearms - before he entered the _Afterlife_ itself and dove into an atmosphere of fluorescent, reddish light, hammering bass drums, chatter and the sight of scantily clad Asari dancers gyrating around poles on a gangway circling a massive, room-filling tube-screen. A smile crossed his face as he took it all in in one stride. He liked the place. It reminded him of shore leave during tours of duty.

Making his way along the edges of the dancefloor he took a seat at one of the club's bars and ordered a drink. The barkeeper was a Turian, a fact that created a small sting in his stomach that forced him to remind himself that not every Turian was like the one who, ultimately, had gotten him into all this. Feeling a pang of remorse, he tipped the barkeeper more than well enough, causing the man to lean forward.

"It's strong stuff, but I know what I can serve humans," he yelled. "The Batarian on the lower floor... not so much," he nodded and was off to another customer.

Kenyon picked the glass up and took a sip and shivered. The blue drink tasted peppermint-ish and was strong enough to make him cough. It did not take much of a genius to figure out that half a dozen of those and he would leave the club on all fours. Still, it tasted good enough, and after all, he had been told to meet his contact here, at the 'Afterlife'. The light caught some movement behind him in the glass held in his fingers. Amos frowned, but before he could react any further his head was mauled against the bar with force. Stars danced in front of his eyes and he felt his knees giving up from under him as he slid from the barstool. Still, he managed to stop his fall and throw himself around, if only just in time to catch a punch against the chest that pushed the air our of his lungs but at the same time chased the haze in front of his eyes away in a wave of clear-cutting pain.

"Ursa Gol sends his best regards," a Batarian male snarled as another punch hit Kenyon, but this time he deflected the worst of it. That only made his attackers mad. There were two of them, the Batarian and a Turian he remembered back from the ship. Amos saw a blade flash, knew this was more than just a beat-up, and old reflexes kicked into action as he evaded the cut. The Turian cheered his friend on, holding a crowbar in one hand and a bottle in the other.

Adrenaline pumped through his veins as he prepared his next move. His body moved instinctively, but his mind worked with cold, analytic clarity, assessing the threat the two posed, plotting his next moves. That ability to keep a level mind under stress would have sometime earned him a position as flag officer under better circumstances.

The knife raced forward another time, and Amos let it pass through, diving aside in the last moment. He grabbed the outstretched arm to keep the knife away from his body and hammered his foot against the Batarian's knee. There was a gut-wrenching, crashing sound, and the attacker's snarl changed into a howl of pain as he staggered backwards. Amos also noted with quite some satisfaction that his little stunt had swiped the smug grin off the Turian's face. Still, the Batarian was as determined as he was frothing-at-the-mouth angry now. The two attackers briefly looked at each other, each waiting for the other to make the next step against Kenyon.

It was all the time he needed. His hand dove for the gun at his side and found it. He still felt some numbed pain, but mostly he felt alive.

Screw them, he thought. Only a Batarian could be stupid enough to bring a knife to a gun fight.

The four-eyed alien only looked at him dumbfounded as the pistol rose in Amos' hand, but the Turian was quick. The crowbar came smashing down, and only through instinct did he avoid shattering his arm's bones as he turned his shoulder into the metal tool's path. It hurt like hell, but he felt no bones shatter. What he did hear was the shot he fired. It took the Batarian squarely in the chest. He slumped to the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut, but so did Amos himself when the next swing of the Turian's crowbar hit him. He lost the grip on his pistol as the pain from the first hit finally cut through the adrenaline.

"I'm going to turn your face into varren food, human!" he growled.

He saw two boots step behind the Turian, and as if he weighed virtually nothing the grey-skinned alien was lifted from the ground. One hand tightly grasping his sleeve, the other pulling him up on his own belt, a human who would have looked compact with his wide shoulders if he had not easily been almost seven foot tall simply turned the surprised Turian away from Kenyon as if he was moving a piece of furniture. With a yell of rage he finally started to slash around with the broken bottle still held firmly in his right hand, but the movements were unfocussed, and the bystanders who so far had only watched the fight the same way someone consumed a movie began to laugh and cheer. Not because the turian was such a fearsome fighter, but because the human pretty much ignored him. The only notion that he seemed to care at all was the concentrated look on his face as he lifted the hardly lightweight alien over his head, took a deep breath and threw him across the 'Afterlife's' dance floor like a rag doll. The Turian's screams of rage and anger briefly turned into a panicked yelp before the impact against the solid wall on the other side pushed the air from his lungs and left him there, unconscious.

Without wasting another look on him, the huge man leaned down and offered Amos a hand. He took it gladly and winced when his shoulder touched the bar. From a secure lounge above the dance floor an Ssari watched him with an amused look to her face before she turned around, vanishing back into her own private floor. Aria T'Loak. She was the true power on Omega, Kenyon knew, the spider in the web, a powerful Asari matriarch.

But right now he was concerned with other people than her. He used the brief moment to examine the man who had helped him. Without a haze clouding his eyes he was seemed even more compact to him. Tall, wide shoulders, thick, muscled arms and a barrelled chest contrasted strangely with a rather friendly and almost boyish face. He had a lighter skin-tone than Kenyon and short, brown hair, but was no less thoroughly armed, even though Kenyon had no idea what for. What he had seen the guy could probably wrestle a Krogan and win.

"So, to what do I owe the honour of my rather timely rescue?" he asked.

"Well, I saw a fellow human in trouble and remembered I hadn't lifted any weights today so I thought, why the hell not?" he flashed a white-toothed grin. "Magnus Johanson's the name," he extended his hand. It was more like a bear's paw, and when Kenyon grabbed it he had to concentrate hard not to wince.

"Amos Kenyon," he responded and sat down back at the bar. The other man - Johanson - followed his example. At first, Kenyon had thought he'd get a new, elaborate fake identity when he agreed to take the job, but the people back at 'Jump Zero' had made it clear that this was no spy movie but the real life. And real life and facial recognition software made it nigh impossible to do what he had expected without extensive surgery. After all, he was on public records for decades by now!

"So, what are you doing here, at this god forsaken hole?"

"They make some pretty good honey on Terra Nova this time of the year," Johanson remarked casually, glancing at him from the corner of his eye.

"Yeah, but only if the yuka flowers get enough sun for two weeks," Kenyon responded wryly, then shook his head. Here they were, most likely two experienced soldiers with special training from the looks of it, and that was the best code phrase some idiot back on Jump Zero could come up with? "What a load of bullshit," he muttered to himself.

"Hey, don't blame me," the other 'Corsair' chuckled, having ostensibly heard him through the perpetual noise and guessed his facial expression correctly. "Wasn't my idea. But now to the really important questions," he grinned widely. "What do you drink?"


	3. Chapter 2

**C H A P T E R 2**

Outside the large plazas and wide, yet crammed, connection sections Omega was an anthill, a seemingly infinite labyrinth of tunnels of varying sizes and forms, of stairwells carved directly out of the asteroid's rock, of patchwork levels showing the marks of dozens of different constructors over the ages. Bulkheads shut off each section, even though most of them stood open. Some of them were tall enough for him to ride through on the back of an Elcor while a few others seemed to be no more than crawlspaces. Again others were marked with the remnants of some script he had never even seen. They looked ancient.

Omega was rumoured to have been first established by the extinct Protheans, the race that had built the Citadel and the mass relays and who had in some form of cataclysm vanished fifty thousand years ago. There were persistent rumours within the military community and from more dubious sources that the Protheans' end somehow was linked to the Geth attack on the Citadel, but evidence was sparse and inconclusive, and the official version of it all carried more weight with the newsies anyway.

If the atmosphere on the plazas and in between the beehive-like buildings which shot up from the ground and 'hung' from the ceiling in Omega's centre was that of adventure and of fully alien impressions, here in the small tunnels, many of which were sparsely lit by flickering lights, was one of danger. One never knew what could be around the next corner or down the nearest stairwell, and it seemed as if the shadows in the corners of his eyes were playing tricks on him, showing him movement were there was none. More often that not they had come across people from almost all species sleeping in the corridors, the smell of puke or excretions clinging strongly to them. Gangs were common place, as were the Vorcha.

Amos had never seen a Vorcha before, and he was definitely certain it had not been worth the experience. They looked a bit like goblins from those fantasy novels that were still so popular with the alliance, and they were just about as clever as that stereotype would have suggested. But they compensated their stupidity with an extra of aggression. Luckily for everybody, even Vorcha were intelligent enough not to bother people who packed as much heat as Amos and Magnus did. Kenyon now had his second pistol plucked between his belt and his stomach for everybody to see, and the giant walking with him wore a pistol and a milspec shotgun both in leg holsters.

"I feel like I'm being watched," Kenyon muttered as they turned around a corner in a rust-covered metal tube that looked like it had been installed by a plumber around the same time the Greek burned Troy to the ground.

"Mate, somebody's always watching you on Omega," Johanson snickered but took a quick glance over his shoulder himself. "There are just too many people on that blasted rock, that's the problem. It either drives you paranoid or you adapt. That," he shrugged, "or you leave soon enough. Either way, being cautious is never wrong in this place."

Johanson slid down a steep, narrow metal frame stair into a corridor doused in the twilight of two flickering light-emitting diodes. Kenyon followed him down there with a last glance over his own shoulder. Magnus Johanson was almost ten years younger than himself. Of remote Scandinavian ancestry, the jovial giant had been rather forthcoming about himself over two of those gut-burning drinks they served at the _Afterlife_. The man was a freelancer, and apparently had been some kind of engineering prodigy. That was until he had gotten himself into a bit of a gambling and loan-shark situation during his time at the academy. Dishonourably discharged from the Navy and burdened with a bucketload of debts he had set out for the Terminus systems and had worked here ever since. The way Magnus Johanson had talked about his life's story had sounded quite amusing, but Kenyon knew the signs of old pain in someone's eyes.

"I wish the quarters were not so far off my ship's docking bay," he mumbled. "I hate not being able to check on it more often."

"You never mentioned you were the one with the ship for, well, the 'job'," Kenyon remarked curiously with a raised eyebrow.

"Because I'm not," he responded without turning to face him. "I own _a_ ship, not _the_ ship," he explained. "But it's probably for the best to let the boss explain it all. So, here we are."

They stopped in front of a grey bulkhead door at the end of a rocky corridor. Johanson punched in a code, and the two parts of the door slid aside to gave way to a large room filled with furniture, electronics and crates of supplies.

"Time to introduce you to the boss and the rest of the motley crew, I guess."

Besides him and Magnus, there were five more people in the room.

An older couple which he soon found out to be married, Franklyn and Melissa Antweiler, owned the _Mercury Star_, a freighter. Frank had the looks and habits of the favourite uncle of the family to him, and Melissa had a motherly streak in her round face. Both seemed out of place at first glance, but the way they moved and the way they clothed and took everything in made it clear once more to Amos that looks could be deceiving.

The second man to shake his hand had a darker complexion than himself and wore a well-trimmed beard. He introduced himself as the navigator and pilot of a ship called _Chimaera_ and went by the name of Nidal Amin.

Kenyon stopped when the third man, a hooded, tall and broad-shouldered figure rose from the set of crates he had been working with. From a greyish-brown face four dark eyes looked at him with rows of sharp, black teeth flashed a short, mirthless smile. Magnus introduced the Batarian as Marak, a dissident and their local 'key' to all matters regarding the Hegemony. Despite that, Marak either held the common disdain most of his species seemed to hold against humanity or simply did not care about social interactions too much as he settled down on the opposite end of the room again, working with a set of electronics he unpacked from one of the crates while Kenyon had the distinct feeling that at least one pair of his eyes was very much watching the rest of the room.

The last person, an attractive dark-haired woman approximately of his age and clad in paramilitary spacer garb, introduced herself.

"I am _Captain_ Janina Craster," she stated in a rather pleasant and deep, yet feminine voice. "Welcome aboard, Lieutenant-Commander Kenyon."

Amos snapped to attention and saluted, waiting until the woman repeated the customary military gesture.

Captain Janina Craster. The name was no unknown to scuttlebutt, the armed forces' rumour mill. Ambitious, capable and arrogant where the three adjectives that described the woman. Stationed with 5th Fleet, she had been in command of a cruiser in the Battle of the Citadel when the Geth had attacked. She had been awarded quite some medals, first by the Alliance, later by the Council, but so had many of the surviving officers of that fight. Coming from a rich family, Craster had enjoyed a life of fame, but unfortunately for her, that fame had gotten to her head, enough so that she had taken her mistress, an Asari, with her on a tour of duty. Her superiors weren't too happy about that, and they were understandably outright pissed when Naval Security found out that her 'mistress' was, in fact, a member of the Asari secret service: a spy with almost unlimited access on an Alliance cruiser. A remarkable shitstorm would have ensued would it not have been for the patronage Craster had been under. Her family posed a dynasty of influential politicians. She had been taken out of active service quietly, her files blackmarked, with Levenworth apparently waiting. And now, a year later, she was here. That told Kenyon a lot more about the whole Corsair project than he had wanted to know.

"Well, now that we've all found the way here, let's get things started, shall we?" she began in a fake, lighthearted voice and started to operate a console embedded into the round table. The lights dimmed and a holographic plot materialized over the tabletop.

"An Alliance stealth recon drone shot these four weeks ago. It's a sublight system, so we did not get the full data until the SSV _Tuscany_ picked it up a week later and brought it back home a week later."

The images in the holographic projector precise recon shots overlay with computer-generated, high resolution representations of ladar readings, accompanied with navigational 'stamps' and a progressing date ticking in the upper right corner of the plot.

"These were made in Methollo, on the edge of the Omega nebula," Craster explained while pushing the fast forward button on the presentation. "The system is in no way remarkable except for the fact that it's completely uninhabited. No refueling station, no mining activities, not even any pirate retreat we know of," she frowned. "Only two dust balls and one methane-helium giant three times the size of Jupiter. For all intents and purposes, it's off everybody's ladar."

"Except ours."

"Except ours," Craster nodded. "Though that also was through sheer luck. Here's what the drone recorded, ladies and gentlemen."

Against the backdrop of a large blue B0 class star the silhouette of a starship hung suspended in space. The point of view slowly changed as the drone adjusted its course until a dull grey hull was clearly visible. It was an ugly vessel, more than three hundred and fifty metres long and spotted with short antennas and sensor domes that made it look like a face with stubble and warts. The hull itself was not quite round, too flat to really constitute a tube, with engine blocks protruding in a circular arrangement from its aft section. Kenyon discerned the inverted bulge so prototypical for large mass drivers from the wireframe model the drone overlay on the optical scan results. Sunken deep into the hull on the ship's starboard bow it was paired with quadruple missile tubes on the port side. The resolution was less than optimal against the blue giant's background radiation as the stealth drone could not have risked active scans, but Kenyon would have known that kind of ship in his sleep. Every academy cadet did.

"That's a Batarian light cruiser!" he burst out, and saw others around the holographic projector nod.

"Quite correct, Mr. Kenyon. I see the downtime has not made you too rusty after all," Craster flashed her teeth, but the smile did not reach his eyes. "It's a _Pride_-class light cruiser, and if the markings and registry have not been tampered with this one is the _Mokasha_. But this here's where it gets really interesting," he pointed to the plot.

Another ship approached the warship from outside the system. It was a smaller craft, one often seen out in the Traverse or the Terminus systems, with short delta wings and powerful engine blocks. This one had a light khaki paintjob over which the name of the ship was written in red block letters. It manoeuvred under the light cruiser, dwarfed by the hundreds of thousands of tons of steel and composites, before being grappled by magnetic docking clamps. Only know did Kenyon realize that two more ships like that already were docked with the _Mokasha_.

"The ship you just saw dock is a _Wayfarer_ class, a versatile small freighter built in the Vol Protectorate. It can be easily armed, is fast and fuel-efficient. And _this one_ matches the description we have from witnesses of one of the attacks," Craster triumphantly drummed her fingers on the table.

"But if the Alliance knows it's the Batarians what are we doing here?" Karina Buckley interrupted him. At Craster's stare she bit her tongue and added a belated 'Ma'am' to the question.

"That's because officially," she air-quoted the word, "the Batarians are washing their hands off the affair." She took a deep breath. "The Hegemony has stated that they lost the _Mokasha_ some eight years ago when it vanished from a fleet reserve yard during a solar storm when communications and sensors system-wide were down." She rolled his eyes, showing how much he believed that particular version of the story. "Anyway, the little we know does confirm the Hegemony did strike the ship from its list of combat units, but did not confirm that what you can see here actually _is_ the _Mokasha_. Aside from that, the Batarian government is maintaining their usual uncooperative attitude."

"They have nothing to gain by working together," Marak, the Batarian explosives' expert spoke for the first time. "If they publicly admit they lost the ship, they loose prestige. If it turns out somebody in the Hegemony's involved while they cooperate with you, its a scandal," he shook his head, briefly closing all his four eyes. "The last thing anybody in the Hegemony's government will do is allow the state to look weak, or appear as a second rate player. If they do their best to withhold information from you, they can blame any trouble on you as outsiders meddling in Batarian affairs. And no matter what any dissident group may bring to the light of the day, in the end the state's propaganda will prevail," he sounded genuinely sad about that last part.

Craster gave him an irritated stare.

"Be that as it may," she continued after a pause, "we have a lead. We will start our search in Methollo, then head into the adjacent systems. Let's pack up our gear. I expect everybody to be onboard their vessels in four hours station time!"

The projector image faded and the lights on the ceiling flickered back to life, with everybody slowly gathering their thoughts, getting into action until Franklyn 'Frank' Antweiler spoke up.

"Wait a minute, everybody, wait a minute. This seems like a big waste of time and effort to me, Captain," the stout privateer objected. "Now, I've never served with the Alliance, but you just said yourself that Methollo is pretty much dead, and the pictures we just saw? They're from a month ago! What lead do you expect to find there? Anyone who's been there is most likely long gone by now."

"Well, Mr. Antweiler, do you have a better option?" Craster asked in a polite voice that barely hid her anger about being questioned in his decision making. Janina Craster was even more the officer than Kenyon still was, and she truly had the chain of command bred into his genes. In the military, you did not openly question the orders of a superior officer. Problem was, they were no longer in the military - at least not formally - and as most here seemed to be volunteers there was just so much discipline one could expect.

"As a matter of fact, I do. I say we go to the one person who has the biggest chance to be in the know about what happens in this corner of space. I say we go to Aria!"

* * *

Heading all the way back to the _Afterlife_ so soon after they had left it was probably the only thing that pissed Amos off about the whole idea. Again, he and Magnus went on their little odyssey through the tunnels, levels and stairs of Omega, silently suffering their fate. Frank Antweiler was not quite so modest. Huffing and puffing and muttering curses under his breath the sturdy North American tried to keep up with Amos and Johanson, squeezing himself between too narrow handrails of stairs or running on shorter legs to not loose the two younger man who covered the distance in a brisk walk.

"I've been travelling through the Terminus Systems for the past thirteen years," he told them between taking deep breaths. "Been doing business on Omega and jobs for the Alliance for most of that time. Courier work, most of the time. The _Mercury Star_'s not a combat ship," he frowned. "Well, not really, but she's a tough girl, and easy to handle. Got just two more crewmembers besides me and Mellie."

"Did you ever have trouble on Omega?" Amos asked over his shoulder, and Frank snorted.

"Son, there's always _some_ kind of trouble waiting for you on Omega. The only way to avoid it is to know the right people and the wrong places. Search the former, avoid the latter - and at any time, carry a gun!" he patted a polished wooden grip that protruded out from beneath his jacket on the left side of his belly.

"Hell, what should happen to three mad hombres like us?" Magnus grinned boyishly and slapped Amos on his shoulder. It looked a bit as if a grown man was patting a child on the back.

Frank rolled his eyes and quickened his pace to shove himself between the two younger men.

"You listen to me, Kenyon. That big Swedish lout here," he nodded towards Johanson, "is a class one troublemaker. There's a reason the Alliance only calls him in when most other people deny a job."

"Now I'm deeply offended," the giant responded with a mock grimace. "And I thought it was because the _Dragonfly_ was one of the fastest and most powerful ships for her size in the whole sector!" he chuckled. "Old Frank here's still pissed off because of that little affair back in the day on Korlus."

"That 'little affair' almost got my wife and me killed, and all because you couldn't keep your nose out of other people's business!" the older man snapped.

Well, there certainly was a history between _those_ two, Amos thought wryly. They passed through the outer doors of the _Afterlife_, and the air immediately filled with music and the low murmur of the voices of hundreds of people.

"And don't think Craster doesn't know what kind of a loose cannon you are," he continued. "She's probably the most stiff-necked arrogant bitch this side of the Traverse, but she's not stupid. Doubt she'll have much patience for your little antiques!"

"Then I suppose it's a good thing that most the time there'll be several thousand kilometres and a hole lot of nothing between us," Johanson growled impatiently, yet with an underlying defensive tone. "And maybe we'll find some nice Asari ass for Craster to tap. Wouldn't be the first time for _her_..."

"Cut it off, both of you!" Amos snapped. He had stopped in front of the inner door. It opened, and two obviously drunken Salarians faced them. Looking into three pairs of glaring, hostile eyes, the two aliens did their best to scram. "Craster's the commander of this mission. Show some respect!" He took a deep breath. "I'll handle this. Just be there to cover me, will ya?"

Both men gave each other a last, adverse look, then nodded almost simultaneously.

Amos Kenyon straightened himself and started for the private lounge Aria T'Loak resided in. Right after the first few steps a Batarian holding an assault rifle slid out of a dark corner and blocked the stairs.

"What do you want, human?" he growled dismissively.

"I have business to do with Aria," Kenyon stated levelly while his eyes mustered every little detail about the guard in front of him, a pal called Anto if you went by the tag on his suit.

"Nice try," he flashed his sharp teeth. "I know the partners of the boss, and the schedule, and you aren't on it. Get lost before you 'accidentally' get injured and-."

He stopped mid-sentence, one hand reaching for his ear, and his face hardened.

"Aria wants to see you," he snarled. "Go ahead. But one false move, human...!" he left the rest of the threat unspoken.

Climbing up the rest of the few stairs, Amos found himself in a darkened lounge area where a few people sat in cushioned chairs at low tables. Asari dancers moved fluidly in front of fluorescent screens in skin-tight clothes that left little to the imagination. Stairs led to an elevated platform that formed a single, large couch on which, flanked by bodyguards, the unofficial ruler of Omega was waiting for him.

"That's close enough, human," she said without looking up from the notepad in her hand when he had reached to top of the stairs. Two Batarians stood at the ready, eight eyes watching him without any emotion.

Not wanting to test his luck, Amos slowly pulled the side of his vest up and motioned one of them to take his gun.

"A wise decision. Quite a nice distraction you and your big friend pulled here earlier today," she stated in an amused voice. "There are so few good fights these days in the _Afterlife_. But then, most people who have been here longer know not to fuck with me," she added in a suddenly much harder, mirthless tone.

As far as threats went, Amos had heard better ones during his time as an active officer, especially considering that he still had his silenced pistol and two armed men waiting outside. Still, he was not here to oppose Aria, but to try to make a deal, and he supposed someone in her position needed to make clear where she stood with unknown newcomers that just happened to walk into her personal domain.

"My name is Amos Kenyon," he began, but she interrupted him with a voice like silk wrapped around steel.

"Oh, I know who you are, _Lieutenant-Commander_ Carl Amos Kenyon," she chuckled when he visibly stiffened. "Not much happens on Omega that I don't know of," she pointed to a camera in the back of the lounge. "Amazing what good facial recognition software and some extra credits can get you nowadays," she mused. "So, what does the Alliance want from me?"

"I'd be interested in whether or not you know something about the series of attacks on human colonies a month ago," he told her, trying to keep his calm.

"And if that was the case?"

"We'd be willing to pay for that data," he shrugged.

"Mr. Kenyon, I'm not interested in your credits," she told him in a bored voice. "What I am interested in are _favours_," she smiled. "You do something for me, I do something for you. _Quid pro quo_, as you humans would say. And it just so happens that I might have the information you seek."

Amos did not like the direction the conversation was taking one bit, but he knew if he wanted to get results he had to play along.

"And what would you want in return for your, ah, services?"

"There's a scientist in the Orieste star system, a Salarian archaeologist. He convinced me there were Prothean ruins on the star's sixth planet and secured financing for his dig in return for 'sharing' his findings with me. However, to good doctor hasn't been very productive in what he's been doing, and a few days ago I even lost the comm connection with him. I need you to go there and bring the fool back here with you," she frowned. "If there's anything worthwhile, I want that, too, but primarily that doctor! He owes me. So, are you in?"

Amos tried not to sigh. Craster would definitely love this, but what other choices did they have except blindly stumbling through the long night? He nodded.

"You have a team. We'll do it."


	4. Chapter 3

**C H A P T E R 3**

**Omega, The Terminus Systems**

**2184 C.E.**

"You did what?" Janina Craster's voice was like a whip as she almost spat the words at Amos Kenyon, the corners of her mouth quivering ever so slightly with the cold rage that hid beneath her suave surface. As expected, she had not taken the news of the assignment Aria T'Loak, the de facto ruler of Omega, had had for them lightly.

"You sent me to make a deal," Kenyon answered laconically, consciously ignoring her anger. "Well, I made one, and I stand by it," he told her from behind crossed arms.

"I sent you to that Asari _bitch_ to get us some information about the abducted colonists," she snapped. "I didn't send you there so you can offer her your services as a messenger boy!"

Kenyon was not certain as to what he felt as he looked at her from behind the mask that was his stoic face. Anger? Disgust? Or was it maybe even pity? So this was how she had kept her own confidence after a year in Levenworth and the scorn of her peers? By dropping the blame and the hate on the Asari? Maybe that would have kept him from drinking and from the nagging suicidal thoughts, a dry voice commented in Kenyon's head, simply dropping it all on the guy he had executed. He subtly tilted his head to one side and opened his mouth to give her another non-answer, but to his surprise the elderly Frank Antweiler stepped in front of him, his hands half-raised in a conciliatory gesture.

"Captain, verbally getting at each other's throats won't get us anywhere," he told her in that calm, uncle-like voice that embodied his whole appearance. Craster's flashing eyes told Kenyon very clearly that here and now she would have been more than willing to get to the physical part of the getting-at-each-other's-throat metaphor, and again he felt _something_ that he could not really pinpoint. Craster, so cocky and secure in who she was and where she belonged, so condescending even after court martial and prison. And yet so very angry, so very ready to blow at the slightest mishap. That was how the events had changed her. Faced with the loss of all that wonderful and convenient prestige of her old life, she had filled herself with rage. For Kenyon, however, there was only a black nothingness inside of him.

"I gave Lieutenant-Commander Kenyon a simple order," she responded more calmly, but there was still fire in her eyes. "An order you recommended, Mr. Antweiler. You wanted us to go to her, to buy that info!"

Frank shook his head, his voice that of a patient teacher.

"Ma'am, this is the Terminus. Knowledge and favours are a lot more tangible here than credits if you operate in the necessary circles. Aria has no interest in the money we might offer her," he gave Craster a thin smile. "She's making more in a single hour, running Omega, than we could have offered her for the whole data she has. _This is how business is done here_. I'm surprised your briefing didn't inform you of that," one of his eyebrows rose in an inquiring look, and Janina Craster's cheeks gained a subtle blush. But the commanding officer clenched her teeth and said nothing. Frank obviously drew his own conclusions from her silence, sharing a short yet telling glance with his wife Mellie before he continued. "No, as freelancers working for the Alliance we're far more useful to her if we do some of her legwork for her."

"You've _told_ her we're with the 'Corsair' programme?" Craster almost squealed in sudden angry horror, her gaze rapidly switching to Amos Kenyon and back to Antweiler again, but the old spacer simply shrugged.

"She already knew that, ma'am," he stepped away from her and took a seat at the table with the holographic projector, pouring himself a lukewarm coffee. "Knowledge and information are her currency. Facial recognition software," he gave Kenyon a brief glance, "scans of our ships, cross-referencing with Citadel-space databanks, a few calls here and there...," he shrugged. "This is her domain, captain, and it is hers because she remains in the know. Always."

A brief silence filled the room, only pierced by the sounds Marak made as he worked on an ever-greater pile of electronics and what Kenyon identified as compound explosives, unconcerned by the verbal exchange in the room.

After what felt to him like all eternity, Craster finally relaxed and took a deep breath, but her voice was still hard.

"Fine," she nodded. "Fine. We'll do it your way. This _one_ time. Mr. Amin, get your ass aboard _Chimaera_ and plot a course to the Orieste star system."

Nidal Amin elegantly slid from his chair and saluted in one fluent motion. Amos Kenyon gave the man of Arab descent a cordial nod, and Amin responded in the same manner before leaving their quarters, Karina Buckley close on his heels. Kenyon turned to follow them, only to be stopped by Craster's cold voice.

"Not you, lieutenant-commander. Assemble your people. You'll lead the drop team. You'll be my liaison on the _Mercury Star_," she smiled mirthlessly.

**In Transit, 2184 C.E.**

Compared to the military vessels he had served on the _Mercury Star_ basically slouched through hyperspace. However, to Kenyon, with more than two decades of Navy service along the borders of human space on his rep sheet, this state of being was a lot closer to his personal equilibrium than he had ever felt back on Earth. The white and blue lines and twisting and twirling clouds of the mass-effect induced hyperspace were a calming play of colours to him as he looked outside the small armourplast porthole of the team's quarters. Somewhere out there Johanson and his _Dragonfly_ were following them on a parallel course. The huge difference in achievable transit time between the literally thousands of ship designs flying through explored space always gave Kenyon a tiny sense of pride and appreciation when more than two of them operated in formation. The computing power a VI had to put into the necessary faster-than-light calibrations was astronomical.

He imagined the tall Scandinavian was still muttering and cursing that the whole plan was one large waste of his speed advantage, and for what Kenyon knew of naval engineering the man was most likely correct. But then the whole 'plan' Craster had formulated had the taste of one large dose of stupid anyway. Maybe he should have said something then, but after his first clash with his CO Kenyon had decided there was only so much antagonizing one day could hold.

Craster ran this whole thing as if she was commanding an Alliance Navy patrol squadron. In her mind, she was probably still flying around in a cruiser, and the _Mercury Star_ and the _Dragonfly_ were here frigate screen. She thought in terms of fleet engagements, and not the type of freelance cloak-and-dagger work Amos had been re-instituted for. Marak had nonchalantly stated that maybe she did not think at all. Given the Batarian's gravelly voice, Kenyon had not been able to figure out whether the man had tried himself a joking, and he had not offered any comment of his own. He was too much an Alliance soldier, born and bred, as to openly heap scorn over his CO's head behind her back. The training, experience and discipline that had paved Craster's way to a heavy cruiser command – granted, aided by family patronage – was something he respected in a fellow officer. Still... .

"Eighteen minutes till transition back to real-space," Melissa Antweiler's grandmotherly voice echoed through the _Mercury Star_'s intercom. Carl Amos Kenyon drew his eyes off the twisting dimension outside the ship and focussed back on the people in the community quarters aboard the freighter. The _Mercury Star_ was a standard design seen all over civilized space, with an engine section on the one end and a spearhead-shaped command module on the opposite end. The long tube between them held docking pylons for up to sixteen flat freight modules, but outside the secure inner-state trade routes hardly anybody ever used more than eight. That way, the commercial faster-than-light engines could give the ship a higher terminal velocity, and it was easier to manoeuvre in the less well-charted regions of real-space. Especially in and close to the Terminus Systems the latter was a feature upon which one's life could depend on.

The _Mercury Star_ also went with the eight modules approach, but apparently less of its internal space was used to haul freight than Kenyon had assumed. The module they were in at the moment contained what amounted to a regular house worth of personal belongings and rooms for the Antweiler couple. Given the two of them had lived in space for at least the past twelve years or so, if he remembered Frank's explanation correctly, that made sense. The ship _was_ their home. Only today they were sharing it with strangers: Kenyon's team.

Nidal Amin was there, cleaning the parts of a sniper rifle with the methodical precision of someone who had been doing this for a long time. The _Chimaera_'s chief navigator had jumped aboard _Mercury Star_ almost the minute the freighter had left Omega's port, having primed the main ship's course and instructed his replacement. There were so few people aboard _Chimaera_ for her size that everybody had at least two fields he or she was proficient in.

Marak was there, too. The Batarian explosives' expert had donned his body armour, a well-protected suit of washed-out crimson, orange and black. A submachinegun and a dozen thermal clips laid on top a simple cloth backpack besides him as he sat on a bench, his four eyes closed and his head resting against the bulkhead. Kenyon was convinced the man was not sleeping but very much aware of all that happened around him. He did not like Marak. In fact, he did not like Batarians in general. Still, Amos Kenyon knew a professional when he saw one, and he could respect that.

Corporals Frederica Adams and Sun-Hi Tsen were volunteers from the Alliance's marine corps, both veterans of the Skyllian Blitz. Adams was tall and broad-shouldered, with the short-cropped hair so prototypical for marines that generations of movies and recruitment ads had used it. Tsen, on the other hand, was almost a head smaller but no less muscular than his comrade. He had spent most his life on New Canton before joining the marines. They were a silent duo, but from what he had been able to learn about them, they would certainly be a welcome addition to the team. At least there would be someone who knew what the hell they were doing, he added sardonically.

And then there was Karina Buckley. The young woman looked not only decidedly out of place, she looked _miserable_. Thin and nervous, with eyes that constantly seemed to scan the room from beneath a mane of uncombed auburn hair, and with her hands folded in her lap so fiercely that the white of her knuckles shone though her skin, she left the impression of a caged animal. Karina Buckley was young enough to be his daughter, he thought, the idea leaving him with a strange feeling.

He sat down besides her and gave her an encouraging smile.

"I heard you were with the Ascension Program, Ms. Buckley?" he asked her politely.

She tilted her head to look up at him and relaxed a bit when she noticed his smile. Nodding, she unclasped her fingers and wiped them on her trousers. They were wet with cold sweat, Kenyon noticed, but decided to ignore that for the moment.

"Yes, for five years, sir," she answered in a weak tone. It was a quite beautiful voice, but a strange shiver seemed to run through it. "One on Jump Zero, the rest at Jon Grissom Academy on Elysium, till last year. I'm a L4 biotic."

"And you volunteered for the 'Corsair Program' directly after graduating? Some people must think you've got quite some potential, then. Well, it's certainly shaping up to be more of an adventure than your standard Alliance service would be," he flashed a friendly grin, but to his surprise Buckley winced, then meekly shook her head.

"I didn't...," she broke off, then took a deep breath. "I did _not_ volunteer, sir," Karina replied almost defiantly. "And I have not graduated, yet." This time she looked down at her lap again.

Kenyon frowned.

"I'm afraid I don't understand, Ms. Buckley."

To his surprise, no, shock, he saw tears in her eyes when she answered.

"I fucked up, that's why! I," she audibly drew in breath through her clenched teeth, "I developed a," she frowned, her voice turning harsh, "_habit_ back at Jon Grissom that got me in all sorts of trouble. The judge gave me a simple choice: detox and ten years in a special prison for biotics, or I join the 'Corsairs'." Buckley laughed bitterly. "That's why I'm here, sir, where don't know if I should piss my pants because I'm going cold turkey, or because I've never been in combat before!" Tears were running down her cheeks now, but she did not sob. Before Kenyon could say anything, she blurted out: "Is it true that you're here because you killed someone?"

Amos' features automatically stiffened, and it took a deep, controlled inaudible breath to force himself back to a semi-relaxed outward appearance in a brink of a second. His face was blank as he considered his answer. _Well done, Amos_, a small voice told him with a sneer. _Where ever you go, your deeds will always haunt you_.

"I did what was necessary, Ms. Buckley," he replied almost automatically in an emotionless voice. "I'm not proud of it, but I did it. And I expect the same from you."

Instead of answering him, she stormed out of the compartment, her shoulders shaking. Amos' eyes followed her as she left, not sure what to make of her and what she had revealed. Whatever her personal issues were: that she had been chosen for this program added just another layer of doubt about the whole 'Corsair' idea. He saw the Batarian stir to his left and turned to face him.

Four black eyes looked directly into his own two.

"She'll get somebody killed," was all Marak said before closing his eyes again.

**Orieste Star System, The Terminus Systems**

**2184 C.E.**

"Transition in four,...three,...two...one!"

The blue and white whirling lines of faster-than-light travel vanished in an instant, making way for the infinite field of diamonds on black satin that was the galaxy. There was no real stop in their travel - the inertial dampeners prevented them from ending up as fleshy chunks of salsa in a tin can - but Kenyon's body always felt as if he was leaning against an invisible resistance whenever he dropped below the light-speed barrier. Forty-eight minutes and one hundred and thirty-nine parsecs away from Omega the _Mercury Star_ slipped back into real-space.

"Orieste star system, ladies and gentlemen, twenty-one point five-two AUs from the sun."

Frank Antweiler's voice could be heard throughout the ship, but the older man turned in his seat and looked at Amos who stood behind the central console of the _Star_'s cramped command module. "Couldn't stand it any longer down there?" he asked jovially.

"I just like to see where we are going," Amos shrugged. "Citadel and Alliance data on the region is about as airtight as a sieve. Is _Dragonfly_ with us?"

The old spacer turned to his co-pilot.

"Mellie?"

"Just a moment, hon," she told her husband while her fingers raced across her station's holographic interface. A three-dimensional ladar display appeared in the console in front of Kenyon, and only moments later a small green dot slid next to them. "There she is. Magnus saying he'll stay on our ten. Are we good to go, lieutenant-commander?"

Amos nodded.

"Yes, proceed. Time for me to get the team ready for the drop."

Orieste was a white G-IV class subgiant twice the radius of Sol. There were no class "M" planets among his seven trabants, at least not today, but at some time during the _Protheans_' shrouded mystery the race that had built the mass relays and the Citadel had settled on Orieste IV. The _Mercury Star_'s long range scanners showed a picture of a barren world, an orange-red ball of dust not unlike Mars, but with Earth's mass and size and only barely minor gravity to it. Large canyons and depressions still outlined where once surface water had been available. But heat and radiation had slowly cooked it all off during the past 50,000 years, leaving a planet formed by the dust storms which menaced its thin argon-nitrogen atmosphere. Only at the world's two poles did water remain in the form of a thick crust of ice.

The Antweilers fed the sensor data directly to his omni-tool as he walked back to the crew section to get the drop team ready. There were regions of purple haze dotted across the planet's surface. Those were the dust storms. Solar radiation and frictional heat highly ionized the thin atmosphere I them, so much in fact that they could down an unprotected shuttle that got caught in them. Kenyon got the pretty good notion that experiencing them on the ground was also one of the less pleasant things one could do. Their plotted course put their landing point a few hundred clicks away from the next larger storm, but Amos Kenyon had little trust in planetary weather patterns after twenty years in an air conditioned tin can. Well, he did not plan to stay down there any longer than necessary. Get in, get the doc, get back out again so that Aria got her data and her servant, and Craster got her information. He scowled as he thought about it. It was as if he had to please two spoiled princesses, with the wry upside that at least one of them knew how to deal with her issues. The other, unfortunately, was his commanding officer.

Oh yes, _he _had made that deal, so _he _better got that data, did he not? No need to waste more of _Captain_ Janina Craster's valuable time and _Chimaera_'s expensive fuel on such a task. No, she would only intervene when Kenyon and his people could not master the situation, something she of course would then blame on _them_! Damn, that woman had been deep in Alliance space for her whole career, and it showed. Sure, he could call her in, and with _Chimaera_'s mass effect field she'd be there in less than fifteen minutes. But fifteen minutes could be a very long time. It was monumentally stupid of her, but it fit the petty streak he thought to have discovered in her earlier.

Amos Kenyon pushed the bulkhead door open, greeting the two marines with an appreciative nod. They had already donned their full gear and saluted him casually when he entered the crew quarters.

"Everybody, we'll reach orbit in ten minutes. Ladies and gentlemen, I want to see you suited and ready in the shuttle in five, is that -."

Frank Antweiler's voice cut him off mid-sentence. He sounded anxious.

"Kenyon, we're less than two million clicks away from the planet and my sensors've just picked up the debris of at least three starships in orbit. I'm getting scrambled, automated distress signals all over the standard comm frequencies!"

Kenyon punched the intercom button.

"I'll be up with you in a second." He turned to the others. "Get moving, I'll join you asap."

The gaunt former lieutenant-commander sprinted back to the command module whose door opened with a hiss. Orieste IV had grown to a window-filling size already, and Mellie Antweiler was navigating the _Mercury Star_ into a safe orbit.

"Frank, tell me what you got there," Kenyon wanted to know.

"Three debris fields. The remaining parts show signs of weapons fire, but it looks as if their cores had gone off. Must've pounded each other really good for that, so-."

"Active mass effect signatures!" his wife suddenly cried out, and two glaring red dots appeared in their ladar display. "They're closing in on an intercept vector!"

"Fuck!" Frank cursed. "They must've stayed on the other side of the planet to remain invisible. Call Craster, and then let's get the hell outa here!"

"Done. The VI's got a target ID, Frank!"

Kenyon looked at the plot where small packets of data began to appear besides the red dots. He muttered only one word.

"Geth."

An angry alarm blared through the freighter, its terse notes driving a sense of threat home.

"They're closing in fast!" Mellie Antweiler's voice was tense as her fingers rushed across the holographic interface. Amos Kenyon could not help himself but be fascinated as he observed the plump woman twenty years his senior. He tried to imagine his mother doing the same – and failed. "Thirty thousand clicks away, on an intercept vector."

Two _Geth _dropships were covering the distance between themselves and the _Mercury Star_ in what seemed like giant leaps. They looked almost organic in design, like an oversized, dull black hornet or wasp without wings. About the size of an Alliance or Turian Hierarchy frigate, they were nimble crafts capable of operating in space as well as inside a planet's atmosphere. Kenyon had seen some of the footage the Navy had released to all its combat units after Commander Shepard and his team had beaten back the _Geth _at the Battle of the Citadel. Those dropships were damn dangerous for their size.

"Their targeting sensors have locked on to us. Estimated time till firing range... fourteen seconds, Mellie," Frank told his wife. "Raising our kinetic barriers and getting the GARDIAN system on-line." Noticing Amos' surprised look he smirked.

"What? You didn't really think this was just a run of the mill freighter, did you? Don't worry, we've still got some aces up our sleeves."

The clock counted down the fourteen seconds, and as if on cue, two new and smaller blips appeared in their ladar plot.

"Missiles incoming!" Melissa Antweiler's voice was strained with concentration as she tried to manoeuvre the one hundred and twenty-thousand tons of mass beneath her seat away from the anti-ship weapons following them.

"Systems are online, darling," his hand raced to the plug in his left ear and he nodded. "Williams says we have full power on the core."

The speed with which the distance between the _Mercury Star_ and its attackers shrunk seemed to slow down as the freighter's engines maximized their output. Angry warning sirens echoed through the command module as the pursuing warheads entered the terminal five seconds of their burn, and the freighter's GARDIAN system tried to stop them with beams of focussed light. Amos Kenyon held his breath as one ladar blip vanished. The ship shuddered as the second warhead was detonated by the defences far too close to its hull, showering the kinetic barriers with shrapnel.

"Bring us closer to the planet!" Franklyn Antweiler growled. "Kenyon, get back to your team, I'll call you there. Sorry, but you're in the way up here."

He managed to flash a brief smile while his fingers run across his own station's holographic interface, just as nimble as those of his wife, as he recalibrated their defences.

Kenyon simply nodded, donned his helmet and left the bridge.

The door hissed close behind him, and Frank leaped from his seat to seal it shut, just in time to notice the _Geth _had launched another salvo of missiles. The _Star_ was pulling everything from her engines, but the distance between her and her attackers shrunk with every passing moment. This time, the GARDIAN lasers shot down both of them before they got too close. But on the other side, thousands of _Geth _programmes were working to negate his success, and they did so by taking a very time-tested human approach: if your enemy can shoot down two missiles, simply attack him with four.

The older man's face darkened as the four new blips appeared in the holographic plot.

"That's gonna be a close one," he muttered. Shaped like a 'V' turned upside down, the four warheads flew in a tight formation, but not so tight as if to allow the _Star_'s GARDIAN lasers to kill them all in one shot.

"Can we take so many hits?"

Melissa Antweiler's forehead was wet with sweat. She had switched from the interface to a set of physical joysticks to steer their ship, leading her on a wild zig-zag that brought them closer to Orieste IV's atmosphere.

"Those things were built to penetrate the barriers of warships," he told her grimly. "I doubt we can survive even two of those."

Missile flight time was now less than ten seconds. Both Antweilers watched the four blips crawl closer, as if time had turned into quicksand. The defence suite began to pour focussed beams of light into the blackness behind them, but this time the attacking warheads aptly danced with them, evaded them – and still drew closer.

Suddenly, as if appearing out of thin air, a massive drive signature tore into their flight path. Mass driver artillery filled the void with one inch projectiles that tore into the missile swarm, blasting three of them to pieces. The fourth lost its lock-on with the freighter and raced after the attacker. He evaded it with a series of high-gee turns before dropping a pair of decoys into its path. The last _Geth _missile detonated harmlessly several thousand kilometres away from the Antweiler's freighter.

_Dragonfly_ swept closer to them, a compact brick with short delta wings and two man-sized domes on the left and right side of its hull. She was tiny in comparison to the _Star_, but she moved as easy and nimble as a leaf on the wind.

"I can interpose my drive signature between the _Geth _and you, Frank. That should keep those missiles off you guys' back. I can keep this up for a while, but it won't be long until they've closed in to effective gun range," Magnus Johanson's voice was distorted by the massive ECM his small ship poured into the vast nothingness around them, offering fake targets for the missiles' homing warheads and filling the Geth's active sensors with white noise. Unfortunately, they did the same to Magnus and the _Mercury Star_, and that was a battle an AI platform would ultimately win.

Frank looked at the course his wife was steering their ship on and nodded to himself.

"Thanks, son. Do what you can to spring to minutes for us. And stay alive."


	5. Chapter 4

**C H A P T E R 4**

**Orieste Star System**

**The Terminus Systems, 2184 C.E.**

The _Mercury Star_ buckled like a wild horse as finally one of the Geth missiles got through her GARDIAN defences and her jamming, detonating in the centre of the second portside cargo module. Debris erupted from the wounded vessel, and leaking atmosphere fanned a brief fire of plasma before automatic safety protocols locked that part of the freighter off. Trailing a thin cloud of immediately frozen air, the ship veered closer to Orieste's fourth planet, spinning erratically to present its pursuers with an uncertain target profile.

"Are your mad? Sending us out in an unarmed shuttle with paper-thin kinetic barriers with two Geth dropships on our heels is suicide!" Nidal Amin protested. He sat behind the controls of the _Star_'s sole drop shuttle and looked incredulously at the intercom speakers from where Franklyn Antweilers spoke to him.

"We can either take our chances out there, where we'd be the least valuable target to them, or we can all stay here and wait till we get shot to pieces," Amos Kenyon replied calmly while he slid through the shuttle's bulkhead and buckled into his seat. "They're down to mass driver range now." As if to underline what he had just said a series of impacts sent shudders through the freighters 120 kiloton frame. "A freighter and a corvette against two Geth frigates. Do the math, Amin," he frowned.

"Listen, people," Frank's voice cut through their chatter. "In about a minute Mellie'll let the _Star_ bounce back from the upper layers of the planet's atmosphere. You need to be ready to launch on my exact mark. We're dropping you right in front of a continental storm front," he explained while the freighter's kinetic barriers shuddered under two further impacts. "You'll need to dive fast, and you'll have to stay right in front of the dust storm. The Geth are a lot more susceptible to the kind of electrical damage that storm front carries with it."

A series of hammerblows struck the ship, and the intercom connection failed momentarily.

"...et ready...n't know how long...okay, Mellie?"

There was a brief, silent pause, then Antweiler's voice appeared again, pained and coughing.

"Fuck that shit and...!" The sound of a fire extinguisher made the rest of the sentence inaudible. "...to do it now! Drop in five! Five, four," the hangar bay slid open.

"Shit! SHIT!" Nidal Amin frantically strapped himself into his seat as the _Mercury Star_ rolled on her side and the planet appeared in full view directly below them, all red and orange and brown plains and canyons cut apart by grey mountain chains and hundreds of wide, round craters.

"...two, one!"

Two hundred metric tons of shuttle dropped from the freighter's bay like a rock, immediately hitting the planet's atmosphere. But while the rapidly shrinking _Mercury Star_ bounced back into outer space, Frank Antweiler had passed off the right moment for the crew aboard the shuttle to penetrate the thin layer of gases that surrounded Orieste IV. Its front glowing with frictional heat, its whole frame rattling and shaking, the shuttle raced downwards through a roaring thunderstorm even though atmospheric pressure up here was less than one ten-thousandth of that at Earth's ground level.

Despite the small ship's inertial compensators and artificial gravity, Kenyon felt his stomach lurch as his senses transmitted the image of a rapid fall and its accompanied feeling of lower gravity to his brain. He pressed his lips shut and tried to keep his pounding heart from breaking out of his chest with slow, deep and controlled breaths. In the seat besides him, Nidal kept muttering a litany of curses in both English and what Kenyon presumed to be his native Arabic, his fingers racing over the vessel's navigational controls in a flurry of motion before he discarded them in favour of the manual steering rudder.

A wide, swirling field of purple and light brown filled the left half of the view from the shuttle's cockpit. Inside it, a white and blue thunderstorm seemed to rage.

"We're coming in too close to that storm front," the pilot muttered through clenched teeth, nodding towards inferno below. "I don't know if I can evade it at that speed and with these atmospheric turbulences. That storm's speed is in excess of 400 kph!"

Amos understood enough of atmospheric flight to realize the dangers it posed. They were dropping like a rock at almost Mach 10. A wrong turn, no matter how gentle, could blow their drive's compensator apart and rip them all to shreds. That, and if they entered that storm he doubted they'd be better off than the Geth. After all, they also needed their electronics to fly.

"Just try it!" he growled and banged his fist against the wall at his back. "Sit tight, people, the hairy part's about to begin!"

They dove closer to the planetary surface, but at an altitude of twenty kilometres the storm front began to fill their whole field of view. Softly, almost delicately, Nidal Amin began to move the small ship's controllers, and immediately the rattling and shaking intensified to what felt like tenfold of the stress the hull had been under only moments before. Warning lights began frantically blink, and half a dozen alarm sounds filled the pressurized cabin. But Amin's and Kenyon's attention centred on the one red dot that had just begun to fade into existence on the shuttle's rear.

"Incoming!"

Kenyon's warning echoed through the teams speakers, but even before they had been able to grasp the meaning of his words Nidal Amin threw the shuttle around in a move ignoring all the alarms and warnings that flashed across the small craft's display. Not a second too soon. A trail of ionized atmosphere appeared to their starboard side where a Geth mass driver salvo had missed them. The pilot hurled his little ship into a roll in the other direction. The engines whined like a tormented animal while metal and carbon fibres moaned under the extreme stress they were put through.

"I'm taking us closer to the storm!" Nidal yelled, and Kenyon tried to make out where that was as the little ship twisted and tumbled. The _Chimaera_'s navigator stabilized their course for just a second with a muscle-crunching move, bringing the apocalyptic wall of dust heated dust and electrical discharges into their plain field of view before the shuttle began a sharp turn to their 'east' at a speed of close to 8,500 kph.

The Geth ladar blip, still significantly higher up in Orieste IV's atmosphere, mirrored its movement, firing its guns. A trail of white and blue appeared squarely in their sights, not a hundred metres off their cockpit. The disturbances seemed to pose some major problems for the machines, but the hornet-like equivalent of an Alliance frigate showed no signs of breaking off its pursuit. On the contrary, trying to keep his eyes steady on the holographic display Kenyon noticed that the ship had indeed accelerated!

But he saw what Nidal was doing. The _Chimaera_'s navigator was using the Geths' own foresight against them. Instead of the normal pursuit pattern a, well, organic attacker would show – that being one that simply mirrored his prey's movements - the Geth rather manoeuvred to where their heuristic algorithms predicted the shuttle _would_ be. In this case, that brought them inevitably closer to the upper layers of the storm. But by now it was only a matter of time until a fatal shot would hit the shuttle as – like pillars of blue and white light – mass driver rounds from the Geth dropship began to rain down all around them.

"We can't shake them off!" Kenyon barked, only to be cut short and proven right by the crunching sound of an impact.

The outer flight path of a 40mm mass driver round merely scratched along the smooth surface of the shuttle, but the effect was the same as if the small ship had been hit by a gigantic hammer. Sparks erupted from nearly all consoles, blue-white flames shot from a cable box above the crew seats, and for the brink of a moment all screens in the shuttle's cockpit simply went blank, throwing it into an uncontrolled tumble before the auxiliaries could kick in. Nidal yanked the controls like a madman, driving the tiny vehicle into the extensions of the towering storm.

Back in the crew compartment, only the two former marines kept pale but stoic faces. Marak had closed his four eyes end seemed to be praying, and Karina Buckley was uncontrollably weeping. Kenyon tried to shut the sounds from his mind and concentrated on the ladar plot.

"Just a little bit further," he muttered.

There was no way he could have seen the electric discharge coming, but it leaped from the fluid wall of the storm front, encasing the small shuttle for just the blink of an eye. Kenyon could feel every hair on his body stand on end – and then gravity slammed him into his seat.

"Inertial compensators have failed!" Nidal somehow managed to croak while he frantically tried to get his ship back under control to steer it away from the danger ahead of it. Despite the sudden high gravity, he and Kenyon managed to stay conscious for the next crucial seconds as the pilot threw his craft into one final turn.

Then blackness enveloped the former lieutenant-commander.

When he opened his eyes again, Magnus Johanson's voice filled the small cockpit.

"That Geth bastard got zapped! They're breaking off! Hell yeah!"

The images transmitted from _Dragonfly_ showed how a scorched Geth dropship very slowly and very carefully was gaining altitude again, heading for space rather than after them.

Besides Kenyon, Nidal Amin steered the small shuttle with grim concentration. The former lieutenant-commander could feel that the inertial compensators were still off-line, but the pilot kept their speed at a low 450 kph, maintaining a safe distance between themselves and the storm without offering the Geth an easy target. It was not exactly a smooth ride, but compared to the last few minutes it was as close to luxurious as one could get. He turned his head to Nidal and winced. His muscles had cramped and his neck ached, making him feel twice his actual age at that moment.

"Well done," his voice was a hoarse croaking sound. "Kept us alive after all." He tried to smile but it came out as a grimace instead. "Keep us here until that dropship's cleared atmosphere, then get us to our destination." He turned his head a little bit further, ignoring the stinging pain. "Everybody alive back there?"

"Buckley's passed out," Corporal Frederica Adams voice was strained but steady, telling him this was not her first combat drop that had turned out to be a dance on a knife's edge. "Puked her guts out, too. Had to take off her helmet and stabilize her, but she should be fine. Though I wouldn't take off your own helmet if I was you. I've got no idea what that girl's eaten."

"Ten-four, Adams. Keep an eye on her," Kenyon told her.

"Will do, sir."

"Good. And Adams? Well done." Amos returned his attention to the man sitting beside him. "How long till our destination?"

"Fifteen minutes, if the Geth decide to play nice," Nidal Amin told him without taking his eyes off his instruments.

Amos Kenyon leaned back into his seat and closed his eyes, trying find his inner calm and to prepare himself for what awaited them on the ground.

"Damn it, those are some persistent sons of bitches," Mellie Antweiler snapped as another series of impacts on the _Mercury Star_'s kinetic barriers brought the same down to 25% efficiency. At 40mm, the Geth mass driver rounds were not exactly the be-all and end-all in the field of ship-to-ship artillery, but they were slowly wearing down the Antweiler's ship's defences. And that long into an engagement they would already have ripped standard commercial grade barriers to shreds. Luckily for Frank and Melissa Antweiler, their ship had been equipped with some milspec tools that – according to Frank – had fallen off the back of an air car. But they were reaching the end of their capabilities now.

"The second dropship's cleared atmosphere again and is slowly catching up on you!" Johanson warned them while _Dragonfly_ danced around the shots the less agile pursuers threw after her. "According to my sensor data they still only got limited operationality."

"That won't help us in the end!" Frank's voice was hoarse from the smoke he had inhaled when the Geths' first missile hit had set off a small fire in a nearby console. "I'm running out of tricks, and _we_ are running out of luck! We can't take many more hits!"

There was a brief pause in their comm channel, then Johanson stunned him with his next question.

"If I buy you guys some time, can you do a 'Chuck Norris'?"

"A 'Chuck Norris'?" Frank Antweiler frowned, then a smile crossed his face. "That could work. Get them off my back for two minutes and we'll be set for it!" He paused for a moment, then added: "And don't get yourself killed, you Swedish oaf!"

"I'll try not to, mum," came Magnus' deadpan answer. "Wait till I'm at the straggler. And Frank, Mellie: good luck to you guys, too."

Frank watched the _Dragonfly_ leave their defensive formation in a turn and at a speed that would have ripped his own ship apart had he ever attempted to do the same. Rolling and almost effortlessly evading the first dropship's fire, the corvette raced past it, swinging her hull around for just a second during which eight hundred projectiles hammered against the Geth's kinetic barriers. It made for an awesome fireworks display in _Mercury Star_'s holoplot, but the pass had barely brought the pursuer's defences down to 70% of their initial strength. Several such attacks would pose a problem for the synthetic attackers, but there was a good chance they'd find a way to adapt to his attack patterns before that. But Magnus Johanson did not turn his ship around for a second pass. He went straight after the second, already damaged dropship that limped fifteen thousand clicks behind its brother. And then, the two Geth ships picked up the active targeting profile of a disruptor torpedo preparing for launch. The dropship following the Antweilers broke off its pursuit and turned around, chasing after the smaller ship.

"Give me all the energy we got on the engines!" Mellie Antweiler commanded, and the battled freighter accelerated as fast as it could, away from the carnage, but not away from the planet. The plump, motherly woman steered it 'up', towards Orieste IV's northern hemisphere while the distance between _Dragonfly _and the Geth shrunk to less than a thousand kilometres. The slower dropship began to blink red as projectiles and warheads began to fill the space between the three ships, and Magnus Johanson cranked up his ECM to full power while _Dragonfly_ spat out all her remaining decoys.

"Now!" she snapped, and Frank punched the holographic interface as hard as if it had been a physical button. Two dozen cylindrical canisters popped from hidden tubes between the _Star_'s engines. When the freighter had put one thousand clicks between them and itself, the containment fields on those canisters collapsed, and simple compound explosives detonated the miniature eezo cores held within them. The explosions were far too weak to pose any danger to even weaker ships, but the mass of expanding core signatures temporarily blinded even shielded FTL sensor systems. It was an expensive last ditch effort, each canister costing easily ten thousand credits even under the best circumstances. For five seconds, twenty-four new, erratic drive core signatures blotted out the two dropships' sensors.

_Dragonfly_, faster than the ship chasing it, dove down on the damaged Geth vessel. She was close enough already that her pilot could rely on her optical sensors to guide his attack. With a soft whirr her two railguns pumped hundreds of projectiles into the vacuum of space. None of them was thicker than an old metal coin, the ones that had been used before everybody had switched over to electronic creds, but at nearly six thousand kilometres per second, they did not have to be. The dropship's kinetic barriers had been badly mauled by the effects of the storm front, frying half the systems and leaving the other half badly suited to compensate for that. _Dragonfly_'s onslaught turned the Geth ship's surface into a pockmarked nightmare landscape from which burning plasma leaked. The hornet-like vessel shuddered under the impact of the munitions, but it did not die. Unlike ships crewed by organic beings, Geth ships did not need to take the survival and the comfort of a "crew" into consideration. The space thus saved went into additional redundant systems, systems that now kept it alive. Slowly, like a wounded animal, it rolled on its side, presenting Magnus with its undamaged part. Another salvo ripped into it. The distance shrunk. Unconcentrated defensive fire erupted from the dropship, but Johanson dodged it easily with the help of his own systems.

Three hundred clicks.

One hundred clicks.

Ten clicks.

Four disruptor torpedoes slid from tubes in _Dragonfly_'s short delta wings. It all happened far too fast for the human brain to compute it in the necessary time span. Johanson's ship had already overshot the dropship by a hundred and twenty clicks when he consciously realized he had launched his torpedoes. At that point, the wounded dropship had already ceased to exist. In its stead, a small cloud of debris was slowly expanding two thousand kilometres above Orieste IV's equator. _Dragonfly_'s young captain silently watched the destruction he had wrought on his screens before he returned his attention to the remaining vessel. It was time for part two of the 'Roundhouse Kick'.

Frank Antweiler watched _Dragonfly_ evade the remaining dropship in a zig-zagging, five thousand clicks wide turn, then head off on a course that'd lead directly past them. The _Mercury Star_ sat safely in the sensor shadow of Orieste IV's magnetic north pole. For once, Frank and Melissa were glad their ship was not as well-built or armed as the Geth or even Magnus Johanson's vessel. A military grade drive signature would have given them away. The way it was, however, they used what little time they had to let their systems cool off and recharge while their few helping hands were busy plugging the worst holes in the freighter's hull. He leaned over to his wife and pressed a kiss on her cheek, and she answered with a reassuring smile. It had been a rough ride, but they had been through equally bad encounters before.

Melissa pointed to the holoplot.

"They've swallowed the bait."

Indeed, they had. The Geth dropship, bereft of the much juicier target of the _Mercury Star_ and clearly aware of the danger the small corvette posed, had decided to deal with Johanson in a very permanent fashion. And Magnus Johanson led it right into the _Star_'s path. The Antweiler's ship did not hover precisely over the centre of the planet's magnetic north pole, but rather close to the edge. Close enough not to be detected, close enough to be able to act.

"At their current speed, they'll pass by the outer envelope of the field in forty-three seconds, Frank."

"Got it. Turn her to parallel their approach vector."

Manoeuvring thrusters delicately pushed the freighter's hull to a forty degree angle relative to the planetary surface below, making its cross-section match the flight path of Magnus and his Geth pursuer. Counterthrusters brought the movement to a halt, and the ceiling of the two frontal freight modules tilted up. From within, two blocks full of cylindrical tubes moved out, their matte grey surface soaking up the light from the distant central star of the system.

"Thirty seconds!" came Mellie's warning.

"_Got it_," he gave the words a bit more emphasis than the first time. "Pressurizing launch tubes. Establishing targeting uplink with main computers and _Dragonfly_'s systems. Warheads set for manual cold launch," he rattled down what he did, his eyes intent on the approaching Geth warship.

"Twenty seconds, Frank!"

"Opening launch tubes one through ten," he flipped down a series of manual switches rather than holographic buttons, and ten silver torpedoes raced away from the freighter, propelled by the oxygen build-up in their launch tubes. "Distance now eight hundred,... twelve hundred..., two thousand... ."

"Ten seconds!"

As if he was watching a tape running on fast forward, _Dragonfly_ and the Geth dropship lunged closer. Frank Antweiler removed the safety cap from an inconspicuous button on his seats left armrest.

"Seven, six, five...!" Melissa Antweiler counted the seconds down.

At 'four', her husband pushed the launch button, and ten disruptor torpedoes awoke to life at a safe distance away from the _Mercury Star_, hurling themselves into the Geth ship's path. Appearing out of the blind zone above the pole, they approached unnoticed during the first two and a half seconds of their flight. At three seconds, the Geth had realized what was coming and had started to roll the dropship around to present their most effective GARDIAN arrays. At three point eight seconds that cluster had shot down three of the incoming warheads.

The other seven hit.

**Orieste IV, Orieste Star System**

**The Terminus Systems, 2184 C.E.**

Kenyon and his team slowly made their way through a natural defile, keeping their heads low to avoid detection. The sky above was a dark blue, almost black, the thin colour the result of the equally thin atmosphere of this once habitable world. Small clouds of whirled up dust blew across the plains to each side of the defile, showering them with a thin reddish layer from time to time. Their target was located close to the equatorial region, in proximity to a large crater region. Millenia of storms had smoothed the cliffs off and created rounded edges on all natural surfaces. From time to time the broken and twisted remains of concrete buildings rose from the rust-coloured wastes, their existence testament to the race that had left them behind more than 50,000 years ago.

Corporals Adams and Tsen moved at the flanks of the defile, Adams on the left front, Tsen on their right rear, both running in a crouch but none the slower for it, their digital desert camouflage blurring into the environment. They had their 'Avenger' assault rifles at the ready. Marak ran behind Kenyon, his four eyes concentrated on his surroundings. A heavy shotgun rested in his firm grip and a pistol was strapped to his leg in a holster. Kenyon himself was at the centre of the group where he had taken up the task of keeping an eye on Buckley whenever he could spare one. She was an example of misery: a straggling, lanky girl trying to keep up with them, her eyes wide with fear. He had secured her pistol - the last thing he needed was for her to shoot someone accidentally - and was pulling her along as gently as he could. He was just glad she did not whimper.

Every hundred metres or so the defile branched out. Despite the marker they had placed on their omnitools' map features it was hard to find the right way. Three times they took the wrong turn only to end up in a ravine that slowly led them up to the very plains they were trying to evade.

Nidal was scouting ahead for them. In their 'everybody has at least two jobs'-team he was the sniper, and his suit had the best optical equipment.

"_This is the right way_," he radioed in. "_But we've got a problem, sir_."

"What is it?" Kenyon inquired, but Nidal Amin did not answer the question.

"It's less than a hundred metres. Two turns to the right, one to the left. You'll see."

Kenyon frowned.

"Understood. We'll be with you in a sec."

He motioned the team to follow him and took the lead through the deepening defile. Soft sand and gravel made for treacherous walking here, but he kept his balance. Buckley was less lucky. She slipped twice, nearly pulling him down with her, the mishaps only making her even more miserable. This was unacceptable. Worst of all, he could not even really fault her. It was not as if she had been _trained_ for this. No, he would need to have a thorough conversation with Captain Craster, and if that did not work, with the man who had hired him for this job in the first place. That was, _if_ he survived.

The chances for that had considerably dimmed. Lying down next to Nidal, he stared into a hundred metres deep canyon that had been cut in half by an impact crater three quarters of a kilometre wide, trying to get a feeling for the terrain.

"What is it?" he finally asked the sniper.

Nidal wordlessly handed him his rifle, a semi-automatic M-97 'Viper' and pointed to the convex ridge maybe two hundred metres to their east. He zoomed in on the area and was surprised to find the steep face of maybe eighty or so metres being stabilized by thin concrete pillars every ten or so metres. Half sunken into the rocks behind them they seemed to carry an access course of some sorts that lay half-buried beneath crumbled rocks and swaths of rust-like sand from further up. And on it were Geth.

"Damn it," he cursed. "Looks like a good two dozen of them securing that path, _and_ they have an armature with them!" He handed him the weapon back and called up his map. A quick glance at the display only deepened his frown. "No way to bypass that ridge. The path up there leads directly to the dig site. According to those photos it's less than half a kilometre straight ahead. Which means me must get through those Geth," he concluded grimly.

"We don't have the firepower to take that many on in a head-on fight, sir, not if they have a walker with them," Adams shook her head. She had switched her assault rifle for a compact grenade launcher. "If we try to take that ridge we'll get gutted."

"Maybe we can bypass them through the ravines to flank them. Shouldn't a couple of surprise shots with you grenade launcher be able to kill that beast?" Tsen mused, but Kenyon transferred the overhead map image to the former marine.

"None of the defiles leads to that ridge, and we can't risk getting out into the open. The Geth may have some of their units watch the plains. Anyway, I'm not too keen on getting any of the team into spitting distance of that walker. That monster's main gun can flash-fry you in one shot."

Silence reigned for a few seconds before another suggestion was brought forward.

"Then how about we call in _Dragonfly_ for an air strike? Zap them from the high ground?" Adams suggested, but it was Nidal's turn to shake his head.

"The Geth would pick up our comm signal, corporal. Talking among ourselves here within a limited radius is no problem, but you need significantly more power to communicate with a ship in orbit. They'd zoom right in on us."

"We really need to fucking plan these things better," Amos muttered, temporarily disabling his suit's microphone.

"I'll handle this. Just cover me on my mark."

Marak had been quiet during their conversation, simply browsing his own omnitool. With his voice still echoing in their helmets' speakers the Batarian slipped from their midst and slid into a narrow precipice before they could react. The weak sunlight of Orieste did not reach down there, but if the Batarian had any problems he at least did not voice them.

"Bloody hell, what are you doing?" Kenyon hissed, but the explosives' expert did not respond. "Nidal, do you have him?"

Nidal Amin scanned the canyon ahead through his rifle's scope.

"No, I don't see him, he's not - wait, there he is!"

The former lieutenant-commander pressed the his assault rifle's less capable optics against his helmet, zooming in as much as he could. Nidal was right! The Batarian ran along the bottom of the crag in a ducked posture, his right side pressed as close to the rock and the concrete pillars as he could manage. Marak stopped at one of them, removed the duffel bag from his back and pulled a grey disk from it. He fastened the device to the pillar, then looked up in the team's general direction.

"I can't get back to you the way I descended," his voice was low and the connection was lousy.

"He's limited his emitter output to evade Geth detection," Nidal murmured.

"When I give you the sign, you'll have to distract them from me to get away," the Batarian continued, having moved on to a second and a third pillar, slipping in and out of the shadows. "There's a formation of rocks to the west that I'll need to reach. Preferably without getting shot," he added wryly.

Kenyon tilted his head left.

"Got it. We'll cover your ass." He rolled onto his back to face the rest of the group. "Adams, Tsen, move to the edge and dig yourselves in. Miss Buckley... just lie flat on the ground and keep your head down."

Nidal nudged him.

"I think he's ready to go."

Leaning back over the sights of his rifle, Amos saw the Batarian wave both his arms. Strangely enough his crimson suit blurring him even more into the surrounding rock formations than the marine corporals' camouflage patterns.

"He's just damn lucky those Geth have never seen any commando movies," he muttered to himself. "All right, covering fire on my mark! Fire!"

As one, three assault rifles and Nidal's semi-automatic sniper rifle began to pour supersonic projectiles into the Geth's direction. Only the sniper rifle really had the range and accuracy to hit anything smaller than the proverbial broadside of a barn at the range they were firing, but in full automatic mode that was to be expected without extensive upgrades. Hitting them was not the point anyway, even though Nidal took one down with his first three shots. Forty metres below, Marak was sprinting away from the pillars and the steep face in an erratic zig-zag pattern. The kinetic barriers around a second Geth flared up before critically malfunctioning, allowing another killing shot to get through.

Then it was the synthetics' turn. Sand and rock splinters erupted all around them as the machines returned fire, and did so a lot more accurately than Kenyon's small team had done. Their own fire almost immediately died down as they careened back on the unstable ground, ducking behind the low wall at the end of the canyon's edge. Only Nidal kept firing, mechanically pulling his weapon's trigger. Tsen and Adams simply pointed their guns' muzzles over the edge and returned fire, thermal clips soon littering the rust-coloured ground around them. Karina Buckley, for once, did as she had been told and lay still in the middle of the ravine, both arms shielding her head. That girl was a millstone around the team's neck. He should have asked to bloody Batarian to watch her. He had more eyes to spare!

"Oh shit! Incoming!" Nidal lunged himself away from the low natural wall they had all been crouching behind.

Amos only faintly recognized the blue flicker on the edge of his vision before the Geth armature's powerful main gun hammered into the stone and sand that had so far protected them. The small wall simple disintegrated. However, Amos, Adams and Tsen did not notice. The impact catapulted them into the air like rag dolls. Like in slow motion, Amos saw his own rifle fly away from him, somersaulting around its own centre while he himself did the same. Then his sudden flight ended as abrupt as it had begun, and he slammed into the side of the ravine, frantically shielding his head with his whirling arms. The impact pushed all the air out of his lungs and left him dazed for a few moments, moments during which the pain from his muscles and sprained joints started to throb in every inch of his body. The dulled moans and curses of the others filled their comm channel. Then, belated, his suit's medical systems commenced their duties, pumping stimulants and painkillers into his bloodstream. Almost immediately the pain receded, and his senses cleared as if he had been dipped into a vat of ice water.

"Everybody okay?" he coughed the question out, trying to get on his knees while his eyes tried to peek over what was left of the wall at the end of the edge. There was not really much of a wall left to speak of. The armature's siege pulse assault cannon had simply evaporated a man-sized, round chunk in its centre. And the damn thing was getting ready to fire again. "Get to c-!" A massive explosion cut him off. Like roaring thunder despite the thin atmosphere, a blast wave swept over them, knocking them back on their behinds. Rock and dust and things that looked like tiny pieces of Geth began to rain down from a swiftly rising black and reddish-brown cloud. The wind drove the dust cloud over their position, turning the world around them into a murky twilight. For a minute or so they just lay where they were, waiting for the worst of it to settle down again, catching their breath.

Then their field of view began to clear again. On nearly sixty metres where the pillars and the approach course had been the side of the canyon had collapsed into itself in a massive rock fall. There was no sign of the Geth anymore.

Nidal crawled to the ledge.

"Merciful Allah!" he muttered. "How about you don't try to blow up half the planet the next time you do this, Marak?"

"I'm glad you're alive, too," the deadpan gravelly voice of the Batarian answered him from down below. "Any casualties up there?"

Nidal turned to the others, but Amos shook his head.

"We're all pretty roughed up. Bruises and concussions, but nothing serious. Hold the spot. We're coming down to you."

The former lieutenant-commander later on did not remember which had been more strenuous: slithering down the ravine or climbing up the lumpy hillside Marak had blasted into a steep-angled ascent for them. Again, he pulled Karina Buckley with him. Luckily, she had calmed down a bit and now observed her surroundings with frightened but clear eyes. He felt like a fucking babysitter! The climb itself took them a lot longer than it the battle against the Geth had lasted. The ground was tricky, and a wrong step had the potential to set loose an avalanche that would bury them all. Nidal took the point again, and they all did their very best to trace his steps up to the halfway buried concrete road.

It was wider than it had appeared from the other side of the canyon. The could all easily walk shoulder by shoulder and despite the sand drifts there was enough leftover space for half a dozen more to walk besides them. But this was no parade.

"Tsen, Adams, take point. Nidal, cover them. The rest is with me."

They slowly followed the sunken road, conscious that enemies could be hiding behind every crevice. Their target slowly grew bigger on their scanners. The road took a sharp turn to the right, and suddenly they found themselves facing two faceless statues. Millennia of wind and ionized storms had sanded all features off the two giants, but they were still impressive in their regal positions, arms erect as if to support the massive concrete ceiling looming above them. An unlit tunnel as wide as the road led further down into the mountain, ending in twilight in front of a two-winged metal gate. It stood open.

"And there I was, thinking this was all there was to this job," Tsen muttered sourly, something Adams countered with a chuckle.

"What's this?" Buckley walked past the small marine and bent down to pick up a silvery disk that had been half-covered by the shadows of the statues.

"Don't touch that!"

The marine's eyes widened and he violently jostled her away from her find, only to be greeted by the familiar whining sound of a self-arming laser-tripwire mine. With Buckley staggering out of the way, Tsen tried to lunge himself away from the weapon, but it was too late. With a dull 'thud' it exploded, knocking him against the nearby wall.

Kenyon and the others ran towards him to check on him. Buckley shrieked in horror. That seemed to be all she did, Amos thought in equal parts sourly and angrily. He remembered what Marak had said back on the _Mercury Star_.

'_She'll get somebody killed._'

"Tsen, you all right?" Corporal Adams fell to her knees besides him and gently pulled him around.

The small marine opened his eyes and grimaced.

"I've been better. Feels like a broken rib or two," he coughed, then winced. "Guess I was lucky the thing didn't penetrate the suit. Still, felt like getting kicked by a mule."

"Can you walk?" Amos looked down on him with a concerned frown.

"Yeah, I'll be fine," he pushed himself back on his feet. "Just don't expect me to do any heavy lifting today, sir,"he grunted.

"I'll try to think of it," he answered levelly. "Let's get moving again. Keep your eyes open," he turned around. "Buckley, you're with me. Keep your hands off, well, everything!"

They carefully made their way down the tunnel, flash-lights on and scanning for further mines. At the end of the concrete tube a makeshift blockade had been erected, but none of the guards were still alive.

Marak bowed down to pull one of the dead bodies over. A slug had gone right through the helmet's visor and ruined the face behind it, but the suit was blue with a well-known white crest.

"Blue Suns," he grunted.

"That'd explain the fresh debris fields we found in orbit. The Geth must have jumped them."

"This is getting better and better," Amos muttered wryly. "First the Geth, and now a boatload of mercs. Wonderful." He shook his head. "All right people, stay sharp. Everything we'll meet on our way down there'll most likely be hostile." Jogging back to the sunken bunker entrance, he activated his long-range comm. "_Mercury Star_, this is Kenyon. We've reached the outer perimeter of the target. There are Blue Sun troopers down here as well as Geth units."

"_We've noticed that, Kenyon. We got company._"


	6. Chapter 5

**C H A P T E R 5**

Frank Antweiler watched the small flotilla of ships approach the planet with a stony expression. Four smaller crafts, maybe corvettes or gunships, were providing the vanguard for a veritable monster of a ship, a converted, solid-looking 300,000 ton freighter squawking a 'Blue Suns' transponder code. It was filling the airwaves with sophisticated ECM, making it very tough to target via long-range ladar. On top of that it was leading the IR sensors down a dozen wrong paths by employing a dozen or so eezo spheres, small drones circling its hull in a distance of several kilometres whose only task it was to emit their unshielded heat signatures. They were still several million clicks away from the Mercury Star, but that would change soon.

"We can't stay here, Frank," Melissa Antweiler soberly told her husband.

"I know, darling," he muttered with a sigh. Remaining where they were was the easiest way to earn a fast pass to the afterlife - and he did not mean club on Omega! The 'Blue Suns' were a no-nonsense crowd. They would not close in to ask questions; they would come in shooting. And really, with two debris clouds hanging in orbit that once had been ships of them, who could really blame them? He activated the intercom and patched himself into engineering.

"How's the work on the drive coming along back there?"

"_We've welded some cracks in the mountings shut and are done rewiring the compensators, boss_," came the answer from the back of the ship. "_I wouldn't take her to FTL just yet, but we're safe to run conventionally up to, ahm, I'd say, 80% capacity_. _My guys are done plugging the leaks, and the bigger holes've been contained by kinetic barriers. Just don't take her back into a fight and we should be okay_."

The warning was more than obvious, and the elder Antweiler decided to heed it.

"Understood. I need manoeuvring thrusters and conventional power in ninety seconds, engineering." He turned to his wife. "We're getting out of here. Getting shot to pieces here won't do us any good."

"_Understood, bridge. You'll have the core up in ninety_," the machinist responded affirmatively, and the intercom fell silent again.

"I'm calling Magnus, Mellie. He's a reckless bastard, but neither of needs to get killed because a bitch like Craster thinks she can play princess out here," he glanced at the bridge's chronometer. _Chimaera_ was ten minutes overdue. If they got out of this alive the Alliance would have to pay them a lot more to deal with incompetence and spitefulness of this level.

**Dig Site, Orieste IV**

**Orieste Star System, 2184 C.E.**

"_We're bailing_," Magnus Johanson's voice cracked through some static. "_The_ Star _took some damage, and I'm down to half my ammunitions. Keep your heads down, guys. There's company on the way_."

"Any ideas how many mercs we're dealing with?" Kenyon sounded composed, but it was more due to resignation to fate than anything else. It was not as if they had many options left to them.

"Don't know. With a ship like this, could be everything between two dozen and two hundred. I've also got Geth readings on the ground, approaching your position from the plains."

"Happy times," Nidal Amin groaned, a sentiment silently echoed by Amos Kenyon and the others.

"_I know. Listen, we'll keep an eye out for you guys, keep you informed if anything happens on the high ground. But we gotta run with our tails between our legs. Too much fire power thrown around up here_," Johanson sounded strung up.

"Understood. Find a safe spot. Landing party out."

Kenyon rose back to his feet and took a look at the tunnel they had moved through, and at the gates they stood in front of. Someone had cleared the tunnel of debris and sand and installed a makeshift lighting. Well, that must have been destroyed in the fight that had left those merc bodies behind. He turned around. The proverbial light at the end of the tunnel appeared dimmer than he would have expected. No, they could not move back out into the open. That would be suicidal - well, even more suicidal than the job they had done so far. They had only one way to go: forward. He shook himself and turned his attention back to the team under his command.

"Marak, do you have something in your collection to lay some traps here to slow down any newcomers?"

The Batarian flashed a grin. With his four, black eyes and the sharp teeth, it was a blood-curling image.

"About a dozen motion-triggered fragmentation mines," he pulled a small tool from his utility belt. "Remote controlled. I'm on my way," he sprinted off into the tunnel, not waiting for further orders, and Kenyon noticed with a frown that the bloody Batarian maybe so far had proven to be their best asset.

"Tsen, hold the position till Marak's back. Adams," Amos turned to the tall female marine. "You're with him. Nidal," he nodded towards the open gates, "you're with me. You, too, Buckley," he added with an irritated afterthought and began to move deeper into the tunnel.

They passed the gate. It was an impressive piece of engineering, Kenyon thought, easily three times his own height and a solid one and a half metres thick. Its outer surface should have shown signs were the sand had grated on it during the past fifty thousand years, but it was as smooth as the day it had been installed here. The energy necessary to move this thing certainly had been astronomical. And yet, _somebody_ had opened it. Instead of finding themselves in another part of a tunnel network, or some sort of underground base, the gate simply lead them to an octagonal room, maybe fifteen metres in diameter. It all looked as smooth as if it had been cast in one go - and it was empty. Illuminating the large room with their suit-included flash lights as best as they could, the three of them began to search for any clues that could offer them a lead. The search was not just academic: with Geth and 'Blue Sun' mercs incoming they had to find a way out of this dead end soon.

After they had searched for about three minutes, Nidal Amin threw his arms into the air with a frustrated groan.

"There's nothing here! All surfaces are about as smooth as an infant's butt! This mak-."

Karina Buckley's frightened and surprised outcry made him and Kenyon whirl around on their heels, weapons already half drawn. The magnet for bad luck had jumped back from the corner of the eight-sided room she had searched. Where she had stood just a second before, a small, green-lit and octagonal console began to move out of the formerly seamless floor. It stopped without a sound at the level of Kenyon's chest, clearly originally intended for the use by a taller species.

"I didn't touch anything!" the team's biotic exclaimed defensively.

Nidal moved closer to examine the console, and Kenyon noticed that the two corporals and Marak had joined them, having completed their tasks.

"Well, I suppose it's Prothean technology," the sniper-slash-pilot shrugged. "I'm not exactly an archaeologist. Luckily for us, someone seems to have bridged that problems for us already," he pointed to the console's side where a round object had been attached to it. "The system's been bypassed. Looks like a high-tech hacking tool," he leaned closer to study it. "Yeah, made by some Salarian manufacturer."

Sun-Hi Tsen stepped forward. His movements were not quite as fluid as they had been at the beginning of the mission, but his self-control and the help from his suit's medical systems hid his injuries well enough.

"I'll try to figure it out," the small marine called up his omnitool. "Shouldn't take me too long." He started to run a series of analytic programmes that were supposed to check what that hacking device actually was supposed to do. The programme cluster had hardly began to run when Tsen hastily withdraw his omnitool and a hydraulic hiss filled the thin air.

"Uh-oh."

There was no transition. One moment the team stood in the centre of the octagon, wondering what was happening. The next moment, it felt as if the ground was giving way. At an insane speed the platform which had appeared to be a seamless part of the whole room raced vertically into the mountain. Against the natural impulse to stare at the ground as the one thing that actually _was_ solid, Amos had to force himself to look up. The walls of concrete were one single, fluid mass of dark grey racing past his eye, blurring into a mush. The dim light from the entrance above faded rapidly in the few seconds they had been moving and was soon gone. Karina Buckley was shrieking hysterically, but he simply cut her from his comm circuit. Mentally unstable girls, darkness and a roller coaster ride. Shiny.

Their descent ended as abrupt as it had begun. One moment the platform moved, the other it rested.

"Inertial dampening field," Nidal muttered perplexed. "And not a makeshift one either."

That made some sense. At the speed the platform had moved a non-bolstered stop would most likely have ground their bones to a mush. And it gave a frightening insight into Prothean technological longevity. But there would be enough time for archaeological insight later. Right now they had more pressing concerns.

"Gear up, folks. Whoever went through those mercs at ground level will be down here!" Amos warned his team mates. Weapons were drawn, and they took up a half-round formation in the centre of the platform. There was no armoured gate down here similar to the one at the top of the shaft.

Then, swift as a saw blade, a dark metal plate emerged with a mechanic whirr some ten metres over their heads from the side of the shaft and cut it off from the surface above. With a hiss, air started being pumped into the room. Adams cursed silently.

"God damn it, I wish they could stop using these cheap scares! I feel like I'm in an alien dark ride," Frederica Adams snapped after she had exhaled the breath she had kept for too long. She checked her readouts. "Standard nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere. We can take off our helmets, sir."

"Keep your suits closed," Kenyon shook his head. "We don't know what's down here."

As if on cue, a wide segment of the wall seemed to simply vanish. Bright light bathed them and blinded their vision for a moment before their suits' visors adapted to the brightness. The two marines had instinctively thrown themselves to the ground, their weapons pointed at the opening. But as the intensity waned, they slowly crawled back on their feet again. Dim light that seemed to be coming from no particular point illuminated a flawless concrete corridor wide enough to drive an Alliance tank through and then some. The material appeared almost pristine to their eyes. There was no hint of decay anywhere. Only the colour from what must have at one time been Prothean markings had not stood the test of time that well, leaving only black smudges. Not that a complete word would have helped. For all the relics left behind by the ancient galaxy-ruling race there was surprisingly little actual data left. Their ruins were empty, some appearing almost scrubbed clean, and the few data caches the Citadel races and later humanity had found were often audiovisual in nature, not written text. Granted, there were certainly thousands of dig sites and just as many planets formerly inhabited by the Protheans that had not yet been discovered, but what _had_ been discovered so far often left more questions than answers.

The pristine corridor was in stark contrast to what filled it. The scene was that of an aftermath of a merciless battle. Burnt out mech parts littered the floor, time and again accompanied by debris from barricades that had given way under an obviously relentless assault. The remains of a more than a dozen 'dead' Geth of all combat classes in various states of destruction were strewn in between them. And in between the mutual synthetic destruction several bodies of 'Blue Sun' mercenaries had been left lying were they had fallen.

Amos was the first to move into the corridor, his deep-set eyes carefully noting every facet of the battlefield as his gaunt face hardened, faced with the close quarters butchery. He noticed that one of the Geth drones was still twitching, a purely mechanical reflex of powered myomers that no longer received fresh input. He also noticed that the same drone lay close entangled with a LOKI mech. Its twitching arm held a whirring vibro-bayonet. Kenyon shuddered. Battles against the Geth had always seemed like almost clinically clean operations to him in the aftermath of the attack on the Citadel. He had never heard, or even imagined, Geth drones getting into hand to hand range and attacking with anything but guns. It gave them a strangely more human face, he thought and wondered at the same time if this was how the Quarians had experienced the fall of their civilization: close, personal, ugly.

Tsen and Adams checked on the fallen mercs - Batarians, Turians and humans alike -, but none of them was still alive.

"Looks like a bloody 'Battle Royale' to me," Nidal muttered. "Blue Suns against the security mechs, and both against the Geth," he shook his head. "Someone badly wants our Salarian."

"Or what he's found here," Marak added darkly.

Kenyon cut the power cords of the moving Geth and rose to his feet again.

"Probably both, but we're not here to speculate about that. Time's short. Take whatever thermal clips and equipment you need and lets keep going."

They followed the corridor until it widened into an underground hall that proved to be just as empty of its original contents as the rest of the bunker complex. The burnt out husks of a wheeled armoured vehicle, and more debris from security mechs and Geth drones covered the floor. But here again the battle had already moved on. The large room, easily a hundred metres long and wide, branched of into three smaller corridors. Only one of them stood open, but Nidal and Tsen went to check out the other two, to no effect. There were no consoles or displays there, meaning those parts of the bunker could probably only be opened from the inside. Calmly, they began to further descend into the old Prothean facility. From time to time they came by closed bulkheads to each side of their tunnel, but the small consoles they found there embedded into the smooth walls were dark and without power, and a quick examination of those bulkheads only brought forward a frustrated shake of Marak's head. Those doors would be able to withstand even the most powerful conventional explosives. Here and there they found spent thermal clips lying on the otherwise pristine floors, but whatever technology the Protheans had used to make those tunnels had created them impervious to the effects of small arms fire. Their route took several turns, and after ten minutes Kenyon began to wonder just how huge this facility actually was. Given the closed hatches they had passed so far, what they had seen must have been the bare minimum of the extent of the underground bunkers.

He did not get to linger on the thought. His suit's audio sensors picked up the faint echoes of weapons' fire, and the former lieutenant-commander ordered his team to quicken their pace. Nidal fell in besides him, with the two marines following directly after the them. The Arabic sniper-slash-navigator had replaced his precision rifle with a submachinegun. The sounds of battle grew louder with every metre, until the corridor around them was filled with the roaring staccato and rolling thunder of mass accelerator weapons and explosions. They moved around a right-hand bend and came to a halt. Less than half a dozen metres away the small corridor widened into a T-section which again seemed wide enough to drive a vehicle through it.

Mass accelerator rounds raced from one side to the other, leaving a blue-ish blur hanging in the air for a few sections in the small section Kenyon and his team could witness. Amos took a deep breath and pressed his back against the wall before tilting his head just enough to glance around the corners. Projectiles screamed past his head and he hurriedly withdrew it, closed his eyes and exhaled to get his adrenaline levels back to somewhat normal...ish.

"Mercs on the left side, Geth on the right side," he told his team, forcing his voice to sound steady. "The mercs are bottled up but in a good defensive position. The Geth," he frowned, "the Geth have an armature with them."

The reaction of his team to the realisation that there was a heavy walker ahead was cut short by the battle intensifying. A rocket screamed through the corridor, drawing a trail of exhaust fumes after it and exploded somewhere in the not so distant distance. Weapons fire from the Geth side fell silent for a moment, them resumed with less intensity. The armature fired its main gun, and the projectile screamed past the T-crossing, slamming into something on the other side. Geth drones rushed past the opening, firing their weapons and ignoring Amos and the other Corsairs. Heavy steps echoed back from the concrete walls, and with a long howl automatic weapons began to hammer away. The sound was accompanied by the sickening tone of something ripping through synthetic fabric. Half a Geth drone came flying back through the corridor, flailing helplessly, it's round ocular flashing frantically. Heavy steps from both sides approached. Slowly, unhurriedly the massive bipedal form of a heavy YMIR security mech shoved itself into Kenyon's field of view while the Geth armature was also close enough for him to clearly here it.

"Shit! SHIT! Fall back! Move it, people!"

But it was too late. The YMIR stopped its approach, but only to unleash another missile from its launcher. It slammed into the massive Geth walker at point blank range, forcing the machine to stagger back a bit. Still, the explosion was enough to knock the members of Kenyon's team off their feet. The armature responded with a shot from its own main gun, supported by the small arms of the remaining Geth drones that had assembled around it. For a few seconds the two giants were duking it out in a ferocious match of mutually assured destruction while a shaken Kenyon tried to get back on his feet again, numbly noticing that Buckley had crawled into a corner. He returned his gaze back to the T-crossing just in time to realize the heavy security mech had sustained critical damage and had begun to overload. He hurled himself away from it with all his remaining strength, and not a second too soon. The mech's small power core exploded, and a wave of superheated plasma raced through the wider corridor, its extensions rushing into the team's hideout where it almost burned out their suits' capacitors. Here and there the compound materials most of the suits were made off seemed to smoulder. But they were alive. However, before Kenyon could thank whatever god there was for their luck, the Geth armature exploded in a storm of electrical overcharges that raced right through the team, knocking half of them out by the shock, the other half by the blast wave.

Karina Buckley had remained unaffected by the explosions since she had been the one of the team the furthest away from them. She was no fighter. What few combat simulations she had been in had been simple point and shoot training exercises against targets that did not shoot back. Nothing had prepared her for what she was going through at the moment. She did not want to look at the other team members since she feared that what she would see were the faces of dead people, leaving her alone and stranded beneath the surface of an alien planet, surrounded by things set out to kill her. Her fear was almost literally choking her. Shit, she was only eighteen. People her age were supposed to make their first experiences with drugs and alcohol that age, maybe get a boy- or girlfriend. This here was not how it was supposed to be. A thin stream of tears ran down her cheeks. Oh, shit, how she had disappointed her parents... . There were a thousand different thoughts running through her head at the same time. She only noticed that someone had stepped into the corridor when he kicked her foot and she, instinctively, looked up.

"Hey, seems like we have newcomers," a menacing voice called out. "And one of them's even conscious."

She frantically blinked the tears away, trying to figure out who was standing there against the backdrop of light from the larger corridor. Three more shadows stepped into the hallway, casually strolling over the other fallen team members. The light dimmed enough for her to realize she was surrounded by a group of 'Blue Sun' mercenaries.

"What about the others?" one of the newcomers wanted to know, and the man in front of her - a Batarian, she realized now - shrugged his shoulders.

"What about them, Bernowsky? Unconscious and no danger to us," he picked up a gun from the floor. "Take their stuff, we'll see what we do with them later."

The one he had spoken to, Bernowsky, seemed to frown.

"Why the hell should we do that? Lets just put a bullet between their eyes and be done with it!"

The leader of them, the one that had kicked her, shook his head and laughed maliciously.

"Now, now, Mr. Bernowsky. That way, we won't have the opportunity to talk to them. And," he stared down at Buckley with a dangerous sparkle in his four eyes, "we'd be spoiling all the fun we could get out of this." He grabbed her arm and pulled her to her feet.

Buckley was young, and she was no fighter, but she was not stupid. She had an all too good idea of what this 'fun' would be, and she struggled against the Batarian's grip. He slapped her, and got ready for another swing when the other merc stepped in.

"There aren't exactly many options as to who they are working for, boss," he had grabbed the Batarian's hand and held the man's four-eyed gaze. "They're either freelancers who've stumbled into this, or they're here on behalf of Aria T'Loak to get to that Salarian before we can snatch him up for Vido. Either way, keeping them around would be a movie-villain mistake." He let go of the Batarian's hand and shrugged nonchalantly. "Anyway, with the Geth up there I doubt there'd be time for some 'fun'," he airquoted the word in a distinctly neutral tone.

The Batarian harrumphed but let go of Karina. She slid back to the ground, shaking.

"Fine, I see your point, Bernowsky. All right, lets be about it, then." He drew his sidearm and levelled it at Buckley, and something more primal, something stronger tore through the haze of fear and panic that engulfed her, something that stopped her shaking and whimpering and made him hesitate momentarily: her survival instinct.

Her latent powers broke through the barriers her mind had erected around them out of fear and shame, and like some huge juggernaut a biotic shock wave unloaded itself in the narrow confines of the corridor without any advance warning. Like flies swatted aside by a giant, the Batarian, Bernowsky, and the other two mercs flew through the air, crashing into the concrete wall on the other side with so much force that Buckley could - somewhere at the edge of her conscious mind - hear their bones shatter. Feeling the raw energy flow through her veins, she was on her feet in no time and raced out into the open. There were no Geth left in the tunnel, but on the opposite side of it some security mechs and and mercenaries looked up in surprise at her appearance and began to level their weapons against her. Instead of the pervasive fear that had been her constant companion ever since they had left Omega Karina felt... excited. Her lips curled into a devious grin, and she rushed towards her enemies. Projectiles hammered against the reinforced walls all around her, but they neither damaged the ancient Prothean structures nor did they injure herself. She moved like lightning, her reservoir of biotic power propelling her across the hundred or so metres like a spectre. A new shock wave smashed the mercs' makeshift barricades and tore two LOKI mechs in half. She leaped into the air, grabbed two crates with a biotic pull and smashed them against the a group of Blue Sun soldiers at full speed. She landed nimbly on her feet, and without pause formed a warp field that engulfed the last two remaining security mechs, shredding them apart much like a disruptor torpedo would have done with a starship. A salvo impacted into her suit's kinetic barriers and threw her around, forcing her stabilize herself on her knees. Her vision turned into a haze for a moment, but when it cleared again she saw a mercenary who frantically tried placing a new thermal clip into his assault rifle. Both her arms shot forward, and her biotic powers unleashed themselves against the man's nerve centre, frying his brain and spinal cord.

Buckley hurled herself around, but there was nobody else left to fight. Slowly, regrettingly, she let go of her biotic powers, and collapsed wide-eyed onto the floor. All her muscles felt like jelly, and her heart was racing in her chest. She lay on the ground, panting. Then, soft darkness embraced her.

_Chimaera_ flashed into existence a hundred and forty million kilometres away from Orieste IV.

"Sitrep, XO!" Captain Janina Craster's voice was harsh, but composed. This was what she had been born for, she thought, her eyes gliding over the holoplot in the middle of CIC.

"Ladar shows five vessels in orbit, presumably hostile. Their profiles mirror those of some mercenary vessels we've in our databanks. Four corvettes and one mothership. Power readings suggest heavy armaments, Ma'am."

"Plot an intercept vector and sound general quarters!"

"Aye, aye, Ma'am." The alarms aboard _Chimaera_ began to howl, and crew members sprinted to their battle stations. "Captain Craster, we're also picking up two contacts in the outer asteroid belt. It's _Dragonfly_ and the freighter, Ma'am. They're hailing us, and they're not sounding happy."

Craster frowned.

"Keep them on hold. Any response from the mercs yet?"

"No, Ma'am."

"All right, bring us in!"

_Chimaera_'s sub-light engines roared to full power, bringing the ninety-five metres long vessel onto a wide curved vector ninety degrees to the position of the 'Blue Sun' flotilla. Craster's ship had nothing of the elegance of the 'SR-1 Normandy' or even a standard Alliance frigate. It was a hexagonal tube with rounded edges, onto which several sensor towers, several massive GARDIAN arrays and two rectangular engines blocks had been fitted. A retractable cover in its central front hid the muzzle of a heavy cruiser-sized mass accelerator while four dual turrets with fast-firing cannons of the same calibre as those aboard _Dragonfly_ covered all approaches. It was a dark ship, almost of the colour of rust, but it was exceptionally powerful for its size.

And Janina Craster intended to make a point of that.

"She's waking up again, sir," Corporal Frederica Adams called Amos to the Karina Buckley's stirring body. Her eyelids seemed to flutter, then they opened and Buckley loudly gasped for air. Her eyes erratically swept the room.

Kenyon knelt down besides her and gently too her hands into his, giving her a friendly, soft smile from behind his helmet's visor.

"It's okay, Buckley. It's fine. You're all right, and so are we. And we've got you to thank for that," he gave her a friendly nudge. "Can you move yourself?"

She slowly pushed herself back on her feet, then gave him a weak smile.

"I think so. I'm just a bit dizzy, that's all," she shrugged.

He held her hand for a just second longer.

"That was some good work, Miss Buckley," he told her, looking into her eyes. For once, her gaze did not flinch away. "I'm glad you're with us." Their eyes met for that moment, and Kenyon had to force himself to open his hand again.

Tsen's voice cut through the haze and made him turn around.

"Sir, seems they were trying to hack their way in," he pointed at the massive metal bulkhead that cut off the tunnel. It was a virtual copy of the one they had passed on the elevator shaft, only scaled down by about thirty percent. Tsen got to work on the console, then turned around with a frown.

"There are about a dozen different code cracking programmes running here," he swept his tools over the running applications. "Seems they are trying to get through a mix of customized commercial Salarian software and something a lot more powerful, supposedly Prothean," he whistled appreciatively. "And I'm not sure which side is on the offensive, sir."

"I don't suppose there's an easier way in there?" Kenyon sighed and put his pistol back into his holster.

"Not really, sir," Tsen apologized, turning half around with a wince. "There's a simple code phrase built into the mechanism, but that could be anything. I've got no idea what weird kind of things a Salarian freelance scientist would come up with," he added laconically.

"Fine, whatever," Kenyon muttered. "Add your own toys to the mix and see what you can get done."

"It'll take some time, sir," Tsen warned him. "This is some really good encryption here, and the programming language is, well, alien."

Amos simply nodded, and together with the rest of the team began to erect some makeshift barricades from the debris that littered the tunnel. If this took longer, they would most likely need something to hide behind.

In the meantime, Karina stepped closer to the locked console. Tsen looked up at her, and she gave him a shy smile.

"I... used to be good with riddles, you know," she told him when he raised an eyebrow. "Will it make things worse if I try a code phrase and it's the wrong one."

The marine gave her a long, sceptical look, then checked his readouts and shrugged.

"Probably not. You can try your luck, but please do me a favour and don't stand in the way."

She began with simple historical facts and parts of speeches she remembered from what she had read in school. Every time she uttered a code phrase, the console would shortly light up in an angry red and bark and angry 'Access Denied', but that seemed to be all her interference did. It was frustrating, but she kept at it. Karina Buckley was aware of how little she had contributed to the mission so far, and she tried to find a way to justify the praise she had received from the commander. As much as it still shamed her that she had needed a near-death experience to force her powers to the surface, it had felt good to be useful and not just a drag. She knew she was of little value helping the others preparing a defence. Physically she was too weak to help them with the barricades, and her biotic powers were strong when awakened, but imprecise. A sledgehammer, not a scalpel. The biotic dug deeper through her memories, but to no avail. Almost as an afterthought she remembered something she had once heard and called up the menu again.

"_Knowledge for all is a value of all_."

The user interface lit up like a Christmas tree, then switched to a pleasant green, displaying a simple 'Password Accepted' tag line. Tsen turned to her, the surprise on his face obvious, and she offered a meek smile.

"It's the motto of the _Salarian Institute for Exo-Archaeological Research_. Social studies always was my favourite subject back at school. I figured since the man we're looking for is a Salarian exo-archaeologist...," she shrugged, uncomfortable with the sudden attention.

"Well, good that at least someone was paying attention in school," he smirked. "Seems like you're turning out to be our lucky charm. That removed the Salarian part of the lock. The rest is just a matter of time."

"How are we doing?" Kenyon called from the other end of the room at the gate, and Tsen held up his hand, all five fingers spread.

After four minutes and thirty-nine seconds, the gate mechanisms began to work. It was a silent process that had the massive metal block swing inside with ghostlike ease. It gave way to an room quite unlike any other they had seen down there so far. It was large, but was at the same time so full of ancient machinery that it appeared cramped. Most of the machines were offline, and Kenyon had no idea what their purpose once might have been. What few lights were on gave off an eerie twilight that turned everything but the closest parts to it into shadows. It starkly contrasted with the almost bright lit wide corridor on the other side. The only direct source of light close to them was a console mirroring the one they had hacked. It stood chest-high, and its panelling had been removed.

"Well, someone was working on this door from this side, too," the small marine of Asian descent commented with an alarmed voice and bowed down over the opened console. His eyes raced across the displayed code, and the anxiety on his face turned to grudging admiration. "Pretty exotic coding, but damn effective," he commented. "Uses only half as many programmes as I do, and takes up a lot less computing power with virtually the same performance."

"Thank you, Corporal Tsen. I programmed it myself," a soft, female voice told them from the shadows, and all weapons snapped to the ready. With deliberate slowness a Quarian peeled herself from the shadows, both hands raised to show she meant no harm.

"Who are you? How do you know his name? Answer!" Kenyon snapped harshly.

The Quarian pensively tilted her head to one side before answering him.

"I've used the bunker's wireless comm systems to hack into yours from time to time, Amos Kenyon. That did prove to be easier than getting this door to open," she shrugged, the sentiment transporting a sense of frustration. Her enviro-suit had a dark red, almost crimson colour, with the reinforced parts contrasting that in a vibrant, lively green. The shawl that easily marked her as a female was of the same colour, but sown with silvery threads. "My name is Zara'Koris nar Rayya," she bowed slightly but kept her hands wisely away from the pistol strapped to her right leg. She tilted her head to the other side, her speech accelerating. "This was supposed to be the glorious end to my pilgrimage, but it seems I got into more than I bargained for."

"How did you get here in the first place?" Kenyon eyed her suspiciously, and her arms flapped down in a clear sign of frustration.

"The pilgrimage is our way of, well, proving that we are adults. The usual idea is to travel space on our own, and then return to the Flotilla with a piece of technology, or even a ship, that'll help all Quarians. I thought I was being clever when I hired myself out as a maintenance tech for the Salarian professor," she sighed. "After all, when was the last time somebody else _paid_ a Quarian to travel. But that was before the Geth and the mercenaries appeared out of nowhere and the prof went all mad."

Nidal frowned, slowly lowering his own gun.

"He went mad? What happened?"

"Our comm and sensor buoy picked up Geth dropships and some merc corvettes before it was destroyed. Some of the others told the professor that we should leave – we have a shuttle, you know – but he began to throw a tantrum, activated the old Prothean bunker VI and shut the whole place down." She shook her head. "The others tried to overwhelm him, but he turned the security mechs against them," Zara looked away from them. "None of them are still alive," she sounded sick.

Kenyon slowly motioned the others to put down their weapons.

"Zara, does he still have those mechs in here?"

The Quarian girl shook her head.

"No. He sent them out when the first Geth," she put an immense amount of spite into that single word, "entered the bunker. "I tried to get out, but there was no way of doing so without being seen. It wasn't like I could fight through all of that out there on my own," her shoulders slumped.

"Miss nar Rayya, can you lead us to the professor?" Amos asked her softly. "We have to bring him back to the woman that sent him here in the first place."

"Aria T'Loak," Zara nodded. "What's your deal with her?"

Kenyon shot Nidal a glance, then shrugged.

"She has data very valuable to us. Data about intensified attacks against primarily human colonies in this region of space. Attacks we intend to put an end to."

The Quarian watched him thoughtfully for a few silent seconds, then, with a start, nodded sharply.

"Yes, I know where he is. Follow me."

She led them through a maze of abandoned and inoperable machinery, sometimes strangely punctuated with what clearly were at least partially functioning servers of Prothean origin, until they reached a wide, possibly oval room shaped like a miniature sports arena. But instead of passengers benches old workstations lined each descending ring, each accompanied by a dark, offline holoprojector, while in its centre a giant, flickering holoplot hovered like a light show two metres above the floor. It showed a multitude of rather simple symbols matched by star ratings between one and seven, and Kenyon suddenly realized what this room was. It was no arena. It was a war room, a command centre. And the Salarian they had come to pick up stood in the middle of it, working with his omnitool as if nothing had happened!

Kenyon took the lead and descended down to him.

"Professor? Aria sends us. She wants you back on Omega!"

The Salarian scientist briefly turned his head to look at him, then returned to whatever he had been doing.

"Professor?" Amos asked again, this time less forceful.

"No time," Harad Velan replied in an atypically deep voice for a Salarian. "I have to get the systems back online as long as there's still the opportunity. Have to gather more uncorrupted data. This here is a treasure trove!"

"There's a war up there, Velan," Nidal Amin eyed the Salarian with much less friendliness than his commanding officer. "Pack your things, we're leaving!"

Tsen inspected the workstations and original computers in the room.

"Seems like he's using Salarian technology to get the original Prothean systems back online," the marine commented, only to be corrected by Velan without him even turning his head.

"More complicated than that. Needed to write own programming language to interface with Prothean systems. And I had to supplement faulty or destroyed segments with what I only could assume to be the right input parameters. Too much of the old system's decayed, too much of the new one's unstable," he muttered.

The ground trembled slightly, accompanied by a sound of a distant thunder. A second tremor followed, then a third.

"What's happening?" Frederica Adams demanded to know, her furrowed brows reflecting the concerns shared by the rest of the group.

The Salarian gave them a long, inscrutable look from his large eyes, then turned back to the large holographic display and waved his custom-made omnitool over it. A series of images and flashed across it before a graphic representation of Orieste IV and the space around it stabilized itself. Five red triangles hung above the planet in a loose formation. More red triangles were marked on the surface.

"The 'Blue Suns' mothership has begun to attack Geth concentrations on planet surface with mass accelerators," the scientist reported in his fast, but at the same time so calm voice. "The bunker's VI system estimates from the impact strength and speed of the projectiles that 150mm and 250mm guns are being used with destructive power in the sub-kiloton level."

"The impacts are getting close," Zara'Koris nar Rayya sounded concerned.

A new blip appeared on the outer edges of the 'war room's holo projector, and the Prothean systems automatically began to relay the radio signals it was sending.

"..._ Chimaera to Lieutenant-Commander Kenyon and the landing team, do you copy? I repeat, this is the Chimaera to_-."

A sense of collective relief ran through the small group – except the Quarian – when the voice started to blare through the ancient speakers.

"Fuck yeah," Adams muttered. "I never thought I'd be happy to hear _that_ voice."

Tsen nodded emphatically. For once, Captain Janina Craster's voice was a welcome sound for their ears.

Amos looked at Harad Velan.

"Can you put me through?"

The Salarian scientist seemed to struggle against himself before he waved his omnitool over a console once more and motioned Amos Kenyon to speak.

"_Chimaera_, this is Kenyon! We're fine, but we can't leave the surface as long as that bombardment's still continuing!"

"_Understood, Mr. Kenyon_," Craster replied cordially. "_Get your people and the package back to the surface. We'll deal with matters up here in the meantime. Good luck_."

The connection was cut again, and Kenyon turned to his team.

"That's our call, people. Lets get the hell out of here. Professor Velan, you're coming with us."

The Salarian scientist did not react too well to that demand. In fact, he became positively agitated.

"No way! There's still too much work to do, too much data to correct and retrieve!" he growled. "Invaluable findings are to be made here, and you want me to hand them to the Blue Suns, or even the Geth? No!" he shook his head. "No, no, no! Hands off me!" he snapped as Tsen put his hand on his arm.

Amos took a long look at the massive holoplot and shook his head.

"We don't have time for this prima ballerina bullshit," he gave Corporal Adams a sidelong glance, and the marine slammed to butt of her rifle against the Salarian's head, sending him into the land of the unconscious. Both, Zara'Koris and Karina Buckley shrieked at the sudden and casual violence, but Amos chose to ignore them. "Take whatever data storage devices you can find. The more we haul out of here, the better the deal with Aria." He gave the ladar blips over the planet one long look, then turned to the Quarian pilgrim. "Today's your lucky day. You're coming with us!"


	7. Chapter 6

**C H A P T E R 6**

**Orieste IV**

**Orieste Star System, 2184 C.E.**

Mass accelerator rounds shot from the bow of the mercenaries' mothership, creating quickly evaporating blueish trails of ionized atmosphere wherever they entered the barren world's thin protective layer. The explosions those rounds caused on the ground where not quite nuclear, but they would have made the effect of even the largest conventional World War 2 bomb look like a child's temper tantrum in comparison, Captain Janina Craster thought as the _Chimaera_ raced closer, coming from the outer reaches of the star system. The bombardment hit close to where her landing party had touched down, and her ship's sensors were advanced enough to make out the individual clusters of Geth that were the actual targets of the mass accelerator attack. Still, Kenyon and his band of losers had royally screwed this mission. Her face darkened at the prospects the mission report would have on her own chances of getting her old life back in some shape or form. She knew that if she did halfway good in this job there were powerful people back home just too willing to put her on a pedestal again, people her family had influence with. And getting back into the upper circles of society, getting the perks of her birth back, that was all that really mattered.

"Entering final flanking phase, ma'am!" her second navigator informed her, and Janina Craster's eyes focussed on the merc ships in her plot.

"Hail them and instruct them to withdraw from orbit until we have extracted our people," she flatly ordered her comm officer, and after a few moments centred her eyes on the middle-aged man, raising an eyebrow. "Well?"

"Sorry, ma'am, no reaction from them," the man shook his head.

Oh, but there was a reaction, no doubts about that. If anything, the large beast of ship seemed to intensify its attack, and four of the corvette-sized smaller vessels accompanying it broke off and raced to meet _Chimaera_ on an intercept vector. With their high acceleration and _Chimaera_'s high velocity, the distance between them seemed to melt away like ice in the sunshine.

"500K clicks and closing, captain!"

Craster intensively studied the four smaller vessels's course, the nodded to herself, entering a series of commands into her own console.

"Navigator, on my mark execute the orders I've just transferred to your work station."

The _Chimaera_'s pilot briefly glanced at the new numbers in his plot, then looked back at his commanding officer with a mix of surprise and doubt. When Craster just stared back at him, he gulped and returned his attention back to his own instruments. Time seemed to run faster than usual as the two forces closed in further. At a fifty thousand kilometres, Janina Craster barked her order: "Now!"

The massive block of steel and engines began to roll around its own axis, belching massive accelerator rounds from the concealed gun port in her bow. Eight rounds with the speed and mass usually reserved for the main batteries of heavy cruisers raced to their targets, two for each of them. The whole manoeuvre was a simple, even dull military attack run, but it was executed against an equally dull intercept formation. The four corvette-sized ships ceased to exist from one moment to the other, vanishing in slowly expanding clouds of debris and plasma as Craster's attack easily overpowered their kinetic barriers. Half her bridge crew simply gawked at the destruction their ship had wrought, but Janina Craster had no time to waste.

"Pilot, direct intercept course on mercenary mothership. Ready main gun and aim at their bow!"

If the man had been captivated by the four explosions he managed to hide it well enough, quickly confirming her orders. In her plot, the larger ship began to turn with the slow speed of an old animal. It might have been upgraded to serve as a command ship, but it lacked the nimble abilities of ships like _Chimaera_ or other, purpose-built military vessels. She had not even completed a quarter of her turn to face Craster's ship when the captain gave the order to fire. Again, four projectiles erupted from the human ship's massive main gun, bearing down on the merc ship's hull. The converted 300-metre ship had considerably stronger kinetic barriers than her four smaller escorts, but they could only deflect so much of the massive impact power. All four rounds hit, dealing crippling damage to the ship, turning the whole of its bow section into a twisted nightmare right out of a painting of Hieronymus Bosch, with steel and compound materials mangled with the remains of sentient beings while white gusts of atmosphere evaporated into the vacuum of space from a hundred gaps and gashes.

"Ma'am, they're withdrawing!" someone yelled, and Craster watched in her plot as the larger but crippled ship slowly left orbit to run. While her crew jubilated, Craster watched it all from behind the iron mask that was her face.

**On Approach to Omega, The Terminus Systems,**

**2184 C.E.**

Being together in one room with Janina Craster always felt like slipping into a bath only to find the water cold and already occupied by a squid. Maybe that was one reason why she had the hots for Asari, Amos thought wryly. Sadly the moment of humour didn't last long.

"Your task was to get in there silently and get the Salarian out without creating a fuss! What was so hard to understand about _that_?" Craster snapped, her hands clasped behind her back as she marched up and down in front of him. "I had hoped that such a simple wording would've been enough to convey the message that I didn't want an entry like in one of those godawful 'Blasto' movies, Mr. Kenyon!"

Standing at a parade ground rest Amos stared straight ahead, his face like a mask chiselled from granite. Nobody liked to be talked down to. Even fewer people liked to be talked down to by self-absorbed buffoons like his CO. But unfortunately, she _was_ his CO.

"Our original mission plans didn't expect space and ground resistance of the magnitude we were forced to deal with, captain. As the highest ranking officer in the theatre I took the decision to alter our approach to meet the new challenges." And none of that wouldn't have been necessary if you'd even have bothered with doing some recon, he wanted to tell her to her smug, snub-nosed face. But he didn't. This wasn't official Alliance business, but the same rank structure applied and she was his superior.

"Bullshit." Craster stopped and turned to face him, looking up at his gaunt face with flashing eyes. "You went in there guns blazing, and as a result by now half the Terminus will know there's a new player on the field! Just the thing I'd have loved to avoid."

Amos lowered his gaze to meet hers and kept his tone consciously level. "Ma'am, you gave me a mission. With the amount of hostiles on location a stealthy intrusion and extraction was impossible. In fact, landing wasn't an option since our ships don't have the electronic warfare capabilities to fool Geth platforms and dedicated merc cruisers at the same time." And you staying safe and sound on your ass back on Omega for sure didn't improve our bargaining position! Her arrogance kept pushing bile up to his mouth, and he had to remind himself that she had been given the short stick with this assignment as much as he himself. The only thing worse than having her as his CO was imagining her in command of something really important: a carrier, a dreadnought, an ice cream truck in Vancouver...

"With all due respect, but us staying completely under the radar once we started operating with more than one ship was wishful thinking. And I believe you're overestimating our overall impact. The Terminus as well as the Traverse are ripe with small bands of independents. Except to Miss T'Loak nobody's likely to register us." At least not at this point, he hoped. "We got the Salarian researcher _and_ he's been able to download some Prothean data. On top of that we didn't lose anyone."

The whole conversation was imminently pointless. Craster had done what no good military leader was supposed to do: she had taken it for granted that the situation would match her expectations. Now she was lashing out to make others look bad for her lack of support during the whole affair. The Antweilers' ship was damaged, Magnus' flyer was out of ammo, they had casualties but had gotten the job done. Like _real_ professionals.

Amos liked to imagine Craster sitting in the _Afterlife_ club, watching scantily clad Asari shake their asses in some bizarre hate-fuck fantasy of hers while he and his people were crawling through the Mars-like ravines of Orieste's fourth trabant. But that would be unfair to the Asari. All Asari. It wasn't their fault his CO had an unhealthy fixation on them. In fact, most Asari he knew were no more or less decent than members of other species. No, he needed to keep his thoughts together.

"Why did you bring that space gypsy onto _my_ ship?"

The sudden change of topic took Amos by surprise. He blinked. _Space gypsy_? God, she meant the Quarian! He cringed inwardly.

"Zara'Koris nar Rayya would have been stranded planetside with Geth forces inbound. As I understand it she's barely more than a teenager. Once they come off age the Quarians send their youngsters out of the flotilla to gather experience and useful parts for their ships. Miss nar Rayya was just doing that."

Craster frowned at him, placing her hands on her hips. "I didn't want an introduction to Quarian customs 101. I asked you why she's on _my Chimaera_!"

Letting an emotion slip for the first time Amos tilted his head questioningly and scowled. "What was I supposed to do? Abandon her down there, either to starve or to be killed by Geth? Last time I checked that wasn't the way the Alliance treated non-combatants in need."

"So you want to play White Knight?" Craster snorted. "Fine, the gypsy's now _your_ problem. Keep her away from sensitive areas of my ship, and when we're back on Omega you'll kick her ass onto the nearest docking ramp. Have I made myself clear?"

"Absolutely, ma'am!" Amos held her gaze, and after a moment it was she who looked away.

"Dismiss!"

Leaning back against the cold alloys of the solitary corridor Amos closed his eyes and embraced the soft and constant vibrations the ship's active drive core sent through every nut and bolt of the _Chimaera_. His shoulders sagged and he exhaled, the air leaving his lungs in a long and wheezing breeze. Craster was a problem. He would have loved to put it another way, but that's what the situation amounted to if he got to the bottom of it. She was a capable combat commander. If nothing else her entry and how she had dealt with those merc ships had proven as much. But her own bitterness and sense of entitlement made it hard, if not outright impossible to work with her.

And this was just the beginning of their mission! All they had done so far was to run an errand for someone who _might_ just have the information they needed. Matters were bound to get harder and even more complicated from this point on.

Craster apparently believed she belonged in an Alliance uniform on one of the fleet's ships of the line. She wanted that bad, and she wanted it now. That petulant stance mixed with her command authority would have been a problem even under the best circumstances.

Amos didn't want back into uniform. Not really, if he was honest with himself. While it was all the life he had ever known he also knew he would no longer fit in with the service. He was damaged goods, no doubts about it. But all personal doubts aside he had an assignment here he intended to complete to the best of his abilities. Which brought him full circle back to Craster. She didn't respect anyone which made it hard for him to in turn respect her. Amos also doubted he could approach her with the necessary confidentiality that needed to exist between a commanding officer and her XO to establish a working relationship. His task was to act as a bridge between Janina Craster and her crew of misfits and malcontents and make the best of the situation. There sure was no doubt he'd been handed the short stick in that regard...

With a deep resigned sigh he reopened his eyes and pushed himself away from the wall. There were still some issues he had to take care of.

The doors to _Chimaera_'s sickbay slid open with barely a sound and Lt.-Cmdr. Amos Kenyon entered the brightly lit room. The attending medical officer didn't even look up from the patient he was treating. Doc Matthias Riker was overweight and perpetually grumpy, but from what little Amos knew the man also was a genuinely qualified surgeon. Under these circumstances that had to mean something.

Sun-Hi Tsen sat on one of the four beds that ringed the sterilized operating table, his chest wrapped tight in clean white bandages. Frederica Adams was with him, looking proud and concerned in equal parts. Noticing Kenyon she jumped to attention. Tsen slowly pushed himself off the bed and stood straight, his face tight.

Amos waved them off. "At ease, corporals. Just wanted to check in on your status, Mr. Tsen. How are you doing?"

"Still hurts, sir," Tsen answered with a warning glance at Adams. "The Doc's applied gel to all the lesions and stabilized three broken ribs, but aside from that they've got to heal the old-fashioned way, if a bit faster. And Corporal Adams was here to pity me since, how did she put it, _ten years in the Corps and still no scars to show it_."

Frederica Adams actually blushed and stood a little bit stiffer.

"Well, not to undo your aspirations but I think I'll keep you away from explosives for the coming weeks. I hope that's not a problem for you, Adams?" Amos hid a smile.

"No, sir. Certainly not... I... No, sir!" she stuttered while Tsen looked _very_ straight ahead.

"Good. Keep going, people." He saluted casually and turned to the next point on his check list, walking over to Riker and the patient on the bed he was hovering over.

Auburn hair flowing over the pillows and pale, hollow cheeks resting motionless Karina Buckley nonetheless looked more peaceful than injured. An IV was feeding her fluids and the bedside screens monitored her vital signs. She'd aptly displayed once again that she was their problem child by collapsing after the evac shuttle had taken them aboard.

"How is she?" Amos kept his voice quiet, leaning down over her bed besides Doc Riker.

The medic harrumphed just as softly. "Totally exhausted and dehydrated. Nothing too serious. That kind of fatigue isn't uncommon for biotics, certainly not for some as frail as her. Quite frankly, I'll have to prescribe her some kind of high calorie diet to keep her up on her feet once she's ready to leave sickbay. But you'll have her back in a few days. All she needs now is some rest."

Amos just stared down at the young, exhausted face and the chest slowly rising and sinking beneath the sheets. This wasn't a marine. Buckley was barely even an adult! Despite all his reservations about Craster it was this young girl here who was the weak link in his corsair team. He shot a glance at Tsen and Adams and lowered his face even more.

"Doctor, I'm now going to ask you something which I believe falls under medical confidentiality. If you're not willing to answer me I won't hold it against you."

Riker's head turned slowly to meet his gaze, one eyebrow rising quizzically.

"Miss Buckley was... a hazard to herself and the rest of the team during the mission. And while her biotic abilities are undeniable she could've just as well gotten Corporal Tsen killed. I'm the leader of this team. Unfortunately I can't choose who is on it and who isn't," he grimaced, the motion making his facial features even more gaunt and pronounced. "That means Buckley is in, period. Under different circumstances it wouldn't even occur to me to ask, but... I need to get a handle on the situation. If there's anything you can tell me about her I'd greatly appreciate it."

The doctor's eyes went back and forth between the two corporals and Kenyon for a moment before he cocked his head. "Let's do this in my office."

Calling it an office was probably too much of a stretch. Riker's personal space was a cubicle filled with datapads and old school paper records stuffed into actual filing cabinets. He gestured to a chair opposite his crammed desk and produced a bottle of brandy and two glasses from the depths of his workplace. "Take a seat, Mr. Kenyon." His hands shook slightly when he handed him a filled glass. Sagging into his own chair with a sigh of relief he took a deep sip of the golden brown liquid, savouring its taste with his eyes closed. Then he began. "I realize we're more or less all in this together, lieutenant-commander. That means you and I both have to make due with the cards we've been dealt. Understand that under different circumstances I wouldn't even consider what I'm doing here and now. It goes against some of the deepest convictions of my profession." His eyes popped open again and he focussed them on Amos. "So let me make this perfectly clear: what I'm about to tell you stays between the two of us. Should I ever find out that you've spoken to anybody else about it you'll have made an enemy you can't afford to have."

The mask of the grumpy old uncle slipped and Amos suddenly felt cold despite the brandy. There was steel in Riker's voice, steel and a very real threat. He made a mental note. There was more to the man than the eye suggested.

Taking his silence for acquiescence Riker continued. "Fine. Buckley." He took another sip, letting the brandy roll down his throat in a slow wave of burning sensation. "Hard case of 'Red Sand' addiction for close to eighteen months. Started gambling to support her habits, then became a dealer when the gambling didn't work out in her favour. Medical dossiers also mention the possibility of prostitution, but that particular point was never confirmed. She's a repeat offender. They caught her three times before the judges gave her the choice that's landed her here, Mr. Kenyon. For the past three months she's been going cold turkey, resulting in abnormal mood swings, exhaustion and a lack of nutrition and hydration. If I didn't know it any better I'd say someone wanted her out here out of sight to die in some dirty corner." Riker met Amos' eyes levelly. "Enough for you?"

The lieutenant-commander frowned. After all it wasn't as if he was _happy_ to have to dig into these matters. Frankly, there would have been nothing better to him than letting sleeping dogs lie. "She's displayed some very powerful biotic abilities when she was cornered. Is that normal?"

"Is it normal for a biotic to display biotic abilities?" Riker answered laconically. "I guess so," he waved off Amos' angry retort. "I get what you're asking, LC. To the best of my knowledge she's a naturally powerful L4. I'd also say there's a high chance she's suffering from some kind of bipolar disorder, but that field isn't my speciality. Regardless of whether that's the case or not, she was highly unstable to begin with, and that may have had an impact on her powers. If you're looking for definitive answers you'll have to make an appointment at Grissom University though," Riker shrugged and put the glass, now empty, away. "Have I satisfied your curiosity?"

Amos studied his own half-empty glass for a long silent moment before he slowly nodded. "Yes. Yes, I think you have. And thank you for that. I'll try to get my bearings for dealing with Miss Buckley in the future. No matter how I get there I don't see it being an easy journey. But you've at least given me something to work with."

The 'all clear' signal hummed through all stations' speakers and he looked up, emptying his glass in one swig. "We'll be docking at Omega soon. Thanks for the drink, doc."

Riker watched him go, considering in his mind the things he hadn't told Lieutenant-Commander Kenyon.


	8. Chapter 7

**C H A P T E R 7**

Adjusting the last metres of its course just with its manoeuvring thrusters _Chimaera_'s rust-coloured two hundred thousand ton frame slid into its designated docking bay with an elegance unbecoming of the ugly ship. One of hundreds of areas as varied in size and of as a different origin as all the rest of Omega and its myth-shrouded history magnetic clamps grabbed the ship and held it firmly in place. A single-piece bulkhead slid shut behind the Alliance corsair in the silence of space, and finally the dock's lighting switched from red to the normal aggressive neon-tubed yellow of the ancient asteroid base, signalling a return of the bay to standard atmospheric pressure.

There were hundreds of docking areas like this sunken into Omega's porous surface, some allegedly dating back the days of the Protheans more than fifty thousand years ago. Nobody had ever cared about where new tunnels and installations were dug to mine the asteroid's eezo. If you had the money nobody kept asking too many questions. That had remained an iron fact of life aboard the station during the past millennia and it still rang true today.

The air pumped into the large hollows was stale and icy cold, a thousand little knives stabbing his lungs with every breath. Brusquely pushing the Salarian archaeologist forward Amos crossed the distance between Chimaera's docking bulkhead and the oval opening on the bay's far side. It was far too cold in here to remain any longer than necessary, not without their combat suits. He stopped in front of the bay's inner gate and pulled their captive around to face him.

"Keep your eyes on the ship if you know what's good for you." Amos managed to put enough menace into his voice to make the scientist recoil, and the alien was quick to nod in understanding. "Nidal, make sure our guest doesn't suffer from a sudden bout of curiosity." The _Chimaera_'s navigator focussed his almond-eyed gaze on the handcuffed Salarian, his own right hand resting casually on his holstered pistol.

Threatening him was all good and easy, all the more so if he believed the humans to stand by their word. But what if he saw through the bluff? Because as far as Amos Kenyon was considered it _was_ a bluff. He had shot an unarmed civilian once in his life. It had been the right choice, the _moral_ choice, given the circumstances. Still, he had paid for it. And whatever people might think of him he didn't plan to make it a habit to solve every problem with a gunshot. He wasn't naïve, but he also wasn't quite that disillusioned.

_Not yet_, a quiet laughing voice called from the back of his mind.

Amos' features remained tight and unreadable as he returned his attention to the locked gate and the bright red holographic symbol in its centre. A menu popped up as he moved his hands closer to it, a muted gong rang out from hidden speakers and a ten second countdown began to race towards zero. With trained movements his own omnitool awoke to life, his long and slender fingers racing across its own holographic menus. At the _four seconds to zero_ mark he selected a program with a move of his thumb, index and middle finger. A series of codes and countercodes jumped from his omnitool to the locking mechanism and back. Machinery hidden behind old rusty alloys and ancient rock solidified with concrete sprung into action, and with an hydraulic hiss the thick bulkhead vanished into an adjacent wall.

Amos looked back over his shoulder. "Ma'am?"

Captain Craster walked past him, assuming the lead of their small party with Nidal and their prisoner following her. Amos took up the rearguard, making certain the bulkhead was locked again behind them. To say that he wasn't exactly thrilled with Craster coming along with them would have been the distinctly British kind of understatement. Taking a woman with a roller coaster history with the Asari to head a meeting with Aria T'loak never had sounded like a more stupid idea to him. He just hoped she would keep the mission in mind and not let the circumstances get the better of her.

The tunnels close to the minor docking bays were too small and too cramped to allow for fast means of transportation. They very much resembled the ones he had taken to meet up with the team in the first place. Only those were in the centre of the asteroid. At least moving on foot pushed back the cold, and the deeper they ventured into Omega the faster the station's ambient heat began to fill the caverns and corridors they passed through until temperatures had risen enough to require ventilation. Fans flapped leisurely behind dusty barrs, here and there water dripped from hidden pipes so old that nobody knew where they ran or who had installed the initial plumbing. Other corridors branched of, often suddenly and in nigh impassable angles to lead to apartments, warehouses and shops.

Passers-by paid no attention to the quartet. On Omega what someone did was their own bloody business. Getting your nose into matters that shouldn't concern you had a habit of making you vanish. Into Batarian slavery if you were lucky. Into a varren's stomach or a Vorcha's cook pot if not. Amos couldn't stand the Vorcha. Not that they had ever done something to warrant his dislike, no. The problem was they were a race with the intelligence level and sophistication of Neanderthals and had no place in space. Given fifty thousand further years that might have changed. But right now their fast breeding and extreme violence was quickly turning them into a problem even for the more civilized parts of the galaxy...

The corridor opened up like a funnel, and on a space no longer than thirty metres the cramped interior of Omega changed into a dome as wide as the unaided eye could see. A storm of voices from all known races - and probably some he had never seen before – swept over them as they entered the asteroid's central nexus.

Holographic advertisements hovered in mid-air, some personalized and addressing passers-by individually, others the size of houses praising this or that good or a particular location one just _had_ to see. The one that picked his attention was just too large and detailed not to be looked at even though air cars passed right through it, their automated flight paths undisturbed by the carefully adjusted photons.

_Come to Anathema – The hottest topless bar in all the Terminus!_

The script faded only to be replaced by the same in Turian, then Asari and finally Batarian letters. Carefully animated models of Asari and human female dancers shook their bodies – topless as advertised – the illusion only broken by the _Blue Suns_ recruitment banner that slowly made its way right through it.

Air taxis landed and started on the edge of the broad plaza they had entered, and the whole place just once again drove home the fact that Omega's limited space made for strange company. Marketeers peddled fried food in huge cast-iron pans next to small-scale stock brokers making across the counter deals with the aid of holographic VIs. Only a few feet further down the road a heavily perfumed female Drell wearing a wig bared almost all her skin to invite tricks, her Batarian pimp keeping two of his eyes on her the whole time. Drugs changed ownership as easily as snacks, and the stale air of the docking bay was forgotten and drowned in a sea of overlapping smells. There was even a camera crew taking pictures. Well, that was less of s surprise. News from Omega was always pretty high on the list of extranet searches, usually flanked by 'Porn' and offers for 'Krogan virility treatment'.

Craster ordered one of the unoccupied air taxies for their use. Slipping onto the backseat Amos shut his eyes for a moment, his ears savouring the sudden quiet hum of the machine's engines compared to the cacophony outside. There were close to eight million people on that rock, give or take a few hundred thousand. Nobody really knew. And nobody really _cared,_ including him. He felt his stomach lurch as the air car entered a steep dive towards Omega's lower levels. Raising his eyelids he watched the beehive like structures all along the huge cavern's inside rush past in a blur. Whole skyscrapers hung from the 'ceiling' or protruded horizontally from the sides. He wondered how the old structures even held together. The whole rock had to be as porous as hell after close to 50,000 years of meddling with its substance.

Setting down on another broad plaza mirroring the one several kilometres above them the sight of the _Afterlife Club_ easily dominated their whole field of view. Despite _Anathema_'s advertisements this was where Omega's true night life. The long line of people waiting in front of the entrance were testament to that, as were the hostile looks Craster and the team earned when they casually bypassed the whole line. The Elcor bouncer right at the door just glanced over his shoulders at the guards behind him and let them pass. Some commotion erupted in the queue but Amos didn't bother to check it out. Whatever happened here he was certain that Aria had right people to handle it.

That was probably the best attitude when dealing with her, period. Underestimating her would be... terminal. Even though this was just the second time he set his foot on Omega he understood that just fine. She wasn't a woman you wanted as an enemy. Amos just hoped Craster remembered as much.

_Afterlife_'s pumping bassline engulfed him like a warm embrace. It was a profoundly strange experience he still couldn't fully wrap his head around, not after the months of self-imposed solitude in the Amazonas Metroplex. But something in the place's atmosphere deeply struck a chord within him. It was... reinvigorating. Today the Asari dancers in the club's central level weren't just dancing in their skimpy, tightly clinging outfits. Today they were also singing. Aria apparently liked to keep things interesting.

_And nobody's gonna bring me down _

_Ain't nobody who can touch me now _

_Cuz nobody else has got what I've got _

_Nobody else gonna make it this hot _

_My words, my rhythm, have you heard what I'm giving..._

Amos pushed himself ahead of Janina Craster and sleekly made his way through the dancing crowds and past the mingling masses along the multiple bars. Craster and their guest kept up with him, the Salarian's face blank, his captain's somewhat irritated. Despite the club's atmosphere tucking on his strings he kept his face stone-still as he approached one of the guards cordoning off the way to Aria's lounge.

The Batarian, a fellow named Anto, wore a greyish-blue and white suit of armour and held a heavy shotgun in his hands with the kind of casual security only another professional recognized. Cocking his head briefly his four dark eyes scrutinized Amos before recognition flared in them. He nodded briefly.

"Aria's expecting you. Seems you got the job done." He barked a gravelly laughter. "Well, you know the deal, human. First the frisking, then the fretting."

Amos did indeed know the drill. He patiently spread his arms and just hoped his own people would play along. While Anto had slung his shotgun over his shoulder the Lieutenant-Commander counted at least two more guards in the shadows above him aiming _very_ lethal guns at their party. He had no intention to end as bits of chunky salsa on _Afterlife_'s dance floor!

But things remained civil, even though Craster's face was tight with anger about being patted down by a Batarian merc. Nobody really liked Batarians - at least no _human_ did – and the feeling was mutual. That made it all the more special they had a Batarian demolitions expert aboard _Chimaera_.

Being thorough Anto's took his time with his checks before finally opening the way to the unofficial ruler of Omega's lounge. Aria T'loak's preferred quarters overlooked the club's central level but were well-shielded from the penetrating cacophony of sounds and from the looks of uninvited eyes. Asari girls in skin-tight garments danced unobtrusively in front of opal glass panes, and another pair of bodyguards at the feet of the stairs leading to Aria's 'throne' gave Amos and his party measuring looks.

She already had another visitor. As intimidating as the three hundred pounds Batarian in the trademark armour of the Blue Suns mercenaries may have been under different circumstances it was obvious he felt ill at ease in Aria's company. It didn't even seem as if the Asari had raised her voice, but her words her hard enough to carry all the way down to them.

"... don't give a fuck what you, your mother or even that moth Vido may have pretended to think. Our arrangement was worded so simply I just assumed the Blue Suns would be able to understand it! _Do not disturb my circles_ means stay the fuck out of my business, Urak. And don't you try to sell me for a fool. Nothing happens in the Terminus without me getting to know of it. Vido should better damn well remember that. If he doesn't, be a good messenger boy and _remind him of it_!"

Almost scurrying away Urak left the lounge, leaving Amos and the others in Aria's care.

"Lieutenant-Commander Kenyon, you're back! And you've brought home my wayward investment. Good. I see my trust in your abilities wasn't misplaced."

"Aria." He simply nodded.

"So curt! No hello, no 'we had to fight our way through Geth and the Blue Suns to get what you wanted'? Tsk, tsk, Mr. Kenyon. You've got to work on your conventional skills." Her voice was almost poisonously sweet but the cold glare in her dark eyes didn't go amiss on the corsair.

Amos only outer reaction was a slight tilting of his head. "Since you already figured that out on your own going by your prior conversation... how about we simply conclude our deal?"

"And there I was, thinking we were all friends here." Aria shook her head, her eyes never wavering from the there humans and the Salarian. "I'll handle the professor from here on. I doubt the handcuffs will be necessary any longer. Or will they?" The way her stare pierced the Salarian's calm made it more than obvious that the question had been nothing but rhetorical. "Release him."

"Not so fast!" The iron grip of the _Chimaera_'s captain stopped the Salarian prisoner from moving. "First the data you promised!"

"Ah, if it isn't the lovely Miss Janina Craster! Alive and in the flesh!"

"That's _Captain_ Craster for you," his CO grated through almost clenched teeth.

Amos took a step back to keep an eye on the conversation in case it went sour – which it most certainly would.

"If you say so," Aria shrugged, speaking in honeyed tones. "I didn't think we'd meet personally. I heard you'd spent some time in the brig. Imagine my surprise when my sources whispered the funniest of anecdotes into my ears. I suppose people back in the Alliance wouldn't take to it too kindly if they knew you were back in the captain's seat. But that's just me guessing." She flashed a shark-like smile and cocked her head.

"Did I hear a threat in there? Because I don't particularly like these, and I like them even less coming from your kind!" Craster snapped, letting go of the Salarian and stepping forward.

"_My kind_?" Aria even managed to sound surprised. "_Captain_ Craster," the Asari leader of the Terminus' central nexus put extra emphasis on Janina's title. "You're my guest here and it'd be most unkind not to know a few things about you for the sake of some polite conversation, now wouldn't it? And having someone here who was on such a nice track to a flag rank in the Systems' Alliance navy – why, you're almost royalty!" She chuckled, leaning forward.

"Is there a point to this?" Each word was a single icy spear thrust at Aria, but the Asari laughed them off.

"Just curious, _Captain_ Craster. I always wondered," she looked at nobody in particular," how does that human saying go? Ah, yes, silly me. _Whose dick did you have to suck_ to suck to get back aboard a ship? Though I suppose your family must've been the ones doing the sucking, seeing how you swing another way?"

"You blue-skinned bitch! I'm gonna-!"

"Captain!" Amos' hand had tightened around her arm just in time to hold her back from jumping the Asari.

Craster's head jerked around, her eyes flaring white hot with hate and anger. "What?"

"We should conclude our deal, ma'am. The information we came for?" Amos kept his gaunt face and dark voice devoid of all emotions, hoping to keep the volcano from erupting again. He could see the battle raging in Craster's mind through her pupils, turning her face into a frozen mask of rage. It didn't cool down, but the magma flow of anger changed directions.

"Fine!" she grated. "Since you seem to be on such good terms with _Miss T'loak_ you'll handle the rest of this, Straight Shooter! Report back when you're done here!" With a sneer Janina Craster turned to leave, not wasting another glance at Aria.

"Feel free to come to the _Afterlife_ whenever you want. I'm sure the dancers can arrange something for you!" Aria purred after her.

With stiff shoulders the CO of the Chimaera marched out of the lounge leaving it to Nidal Amin to hand over their Salarian 'guest'.

"Catch up with the captain, Nidal." Amos looked after her, sighing in quiet relief. "Keep her out of trouble. Charged the way she is right now she might try to beat up a Krogan."

"And I'd pity the Krogan, LC." The navigator intimated a salute and went after their commanding officer.

Aria and the corsair watched him leave before the Asari's eyes focused on Amos again and she cocked her head. "Sit." She waited until he had complied. "You're quite the killjoy,Carl Amos Kenyon. Has anybody ever told you that?"

Amos quickly scanned the bodyguards spread around the lounge. "Things are complicated enough as it stands. The last thing my mission needs is a sudden succession crisis half a galaxy away from Earth." His head sunk back into the soft leather of the couch, the feeling of relief eluding him. Whatever game of cat and mouse this way, he knew he was the mouse. "You enjoyed that, didn't you?"

"Tucking at her strings? Sure. That was probably the best amusement I've got this week. Nothing like letting a bitch like her stew in her own prejudices. I don't envy you, having to work under her. She wouldn't survive a week on Omega on her own." She glanced at him staring straight ahead and smiled. "Ah, silence. A professional soldier would never badmouth his CO."

"If I were you I'd keep a close eye on that Salarian," Amos changed the topic. "He threatened to blow himself up with a bomb in his omnitool when he thought we were trying to scan his data." Which was exactly what Craster had tried to do, but there was no need to stick that to the Asari. "Seems he got his hands on some Prothean VI technology, or at least parts of it."

Aria raised an eyebrow and gave one of her bodyguards a nod. The Batarian vanished into the corridor the Salarian scientist had been led into. "Thanks for the notice. I was more interested in the man himself, but this..." She clicked her tongue and gave Amos a long, hard look. "I'll be frank with you. As far as your problem is concerned I don't know half as much about it as I'd like to. I've got a couple of leads, though. Second hand sources, sadly, but it's the best I've got to offer."

Amos matched her stare for stare, trying to keep the disappointment from seeping into his gaunt features. "That's less than we hoped for. Less than we _bargained_ for, too," he grimaced. "But I appreciate the sincerity. I suppose you could've just sent us on a wild goose chase instead."

"The idea popped up." Aria shrugged. "But if there's one thing I've learned from the Terminus its that only morons make it a habit to make enemies when they could make friends instead." Her tone turned serious. "Mr. Kenyon, I'm not interested in having you, the Corsairs or the Alliance to be on my bad side. It's far better if, well, how do you humans say? _I scratch your back, you scratch mine_. You keep me in the loop, I'll keep my eyes and ears open. Deal?"

'OpSec, OpSec, OpSec!' a voice in Amos' head shouted. He took his time answering Aria's proposal. In fact, what he should have done was bring it to Craster's attention and let _her_ make the decision. That'd have been the correct path. And yet, for some reason he didn't even consider the option.

"_Only_ under the condition that what I'll tell you doesn't endanger our operations. If I think something can be used against us - even if its the burial site of the friggin' Goddess – you'll get nothing from this channel. That okay for you?"

"Sure. I wouldn't want it any other way." Aria smiled graciously. And she had enough other sources anyhow. "That said..." Her omnitool sprung to action. "This is where you'll need to go. As you see there's nothing there. Or rather, nothing should be there. Still, there's too much talk, too much data about activity in that system. It adds up to... something." She frowned, unhappy with her own conclusion. "What I do know is that a Batarian slaver operating in the Omega nebula sold a shipload of mostly human – and even a bunch of Quarians, can you believe it? - slaves to sources in that system. That's the best I have."

"Mighty slim." Amos grunted, and the Asari shrugged. "Since I warned you about our Salarian friend's explosive temper, how about you sweeten the pot a bit?"

"You're learning the ways of Omega fast," Aria mused with a hint of appreciation – and warning – in her voice. "Yes, I suppose you didn't have to tell me. And since I couldn't give you quite what I promised." Her hands danced across her omnitool's menus. "If your 'secret operation' needs special supplies call up this man and mention I sent you. Whether it's a paperclip or a dreadnought's main gun: he can get it for you."

That wasn't what they had wanted, but it was _something_. Amos left Aria's lounge with the sinking feeling that they had been played, and quite nicely so. They had pulled Aria's chestnuts out of the fire and all they had gotten in return was the proverbial T-shirt. Well, and they were still alive. That also had to count for something. The sound of the Asari singers accompanied him as he left the club.

_Uh uh you on the dancefloor _

_Can you ride on my tempo? _

_Uh uh you in the yard_

_Are we making you sweat? _

_Uh uh up on the pavement_

_Are you feeling this tempo? _

_Uh uh it aint hard _

_We gonna ride it trough the night...!_

The labyrinthine way back to their quarters aboard the station lay almost deserted, and he was glad for it. The past days had left him tired and the last thing he wanted now was to break the 'great' news to Craster.

After a while he noticed a squeaking noise following him and a slipped around a corner to wait and see. To his surprise a small Vorcha pulling a shabby handcart full of garbage came down the corridor, stopped at the next best hatch and rang the equivalent of the door bell. Amos couldn't see who opened it but he could hear the Vorcha's shrill voice.

"Me Nishruk!" the alien flashed his teeth in what was supposed to be a smile."'Nishruk gather trash, make things clean. You pay Nishruk 5 credits when comes to take trash! Will come one time every week!" And he got paid! Just out of curiosity Amos watched him for a while. Surprisingly many doors opened for the rather small Vorcha, even though he stank just as much as the trash that he collected. Maybe Vorcha were good for something after all...

Omega's mushroom silhouette vanished into the distance of the Sahrabarik star system's asteroid belt as _Chimaera_'s drive core accelerated the ship to the edge of the system. Amos watched the holographic plot leading them on a steady course towards the galactic north. Once they had passed the orbit of the outer stellar objects they'd engage their standard faster-than-light engines to start the week-long trip to the Hors star system on the edge of the Omega Nebula.

_Chimaera_'s bridge was a cramped space, very much unlike what one would have had in mind when thinking of ships of similar size – like the already legendary _Normandy SR-1_. But the corsair ship was four engine blocks built around a cruiser-level mass accelerator and the reactors to power both. That left little space for anything else. The pilot-slash-navigator shared a room with the captain, the rest of the bridge crew and the ship's holoplot.

Right now Amos occupied the captain's chair, and he leaned forward when a new massive mass signature appeared in the plot in front of him.

Sensing his question, Nidal glanced back over his shoulder from the controls of _Chimaera_.

"That's the _Omega-4 Relay_. It's a bit like the galaxy's Bermuda Triangle. No ship's ever returned from a trip through it. Kinda gives me the creeps."

"Well, I guess we're lucky then." The image switched to show a yellow-white F3 main sequence star 1.3 times the mass of Sol. The Hors star system.

"What do you think we'll find there, LC?"

"Answers, Nidal. Answers." It was about time they got some.


End file.
